


The Unremembered

by Yvearia



Category: Criminal Minds (US TV), Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Fiesty Clara, Humor, Outer Space, Rule #1, Secrets, The Doctor Always Lies, Time Travel, confused Spencer
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-22
Updated: 2018-06-22
Packaged: 2019-05-27 03:10:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 29,011
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15015362
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Yvearia/pseuds/Yvearia
Summary: "I'm The Doctor and this is Clara. And what is going on is a bit of a vacation of sorts. Well, for you a vacation, for me a vocation, and, well… for Clara it's likely just another Wednesday. And where we are is only half of the question. The more intriguing aspect being when. When are we?" Acreie 67... it's the new New Las Vegas."***Posted originally on ff.net.  Set in Doctor Who Series 7 between "The Day of The Doctor" and "The Name of The Doctor", and in Criminal Minds Season 7 Ep 2 "Proof"Spoilers ahead, see authors note.





	1. Dr. Reeid, In The Library

 

 

 

I just thought that the Doctors Who and Reid would be a good pair. This began as a simple dalliance to give Reid a bit of a break from the pressure of life and work... It has grown into something so much more than the intended 'vacation' for Dr. Reid (as so many of the adventures with The Doctor do). Meant as a one-shot, it's become a chapter fic. I hope you'll hange with me till the end. I'm so close.

I can't get anyone to beta for me, so all mistakes and space-time inaccuracies are all mine.

BIG also... Please forget how big a Docroe Who fan Reid is. Not so in this universe!

* * *

"This is one corner… of one country, in one continent, on one planet that's a corner of a galaxy that's a corner of a universe that is forever growing and shrinking and creating and destroying and never remaining the same for a single millisecond. And there is so much, so much to see."

-The Doctor

* * *

"Doctor?"

The brown mop of hair appeared inverted from his station on his back, beneath the console.

"Ah. Clara! Perfect timing. Pass along that spanner, eh?" She handed over the wrench quickly before resuming the urgency with which she had sought him out in the first place.

"Doctor, do you know there's a man mumbling and pacing your library?" she asked, trying to make the question sound more calm than she felt at that particular moment.

"Oh good, you've met," he said simply, reaching for his sonic and adjusting the settings with a casualty that always managed to get her goat just a little bit.

She took a breath and counted to ten.

"No. We've not met. But he looks in distress and I wondered whether..."

"Oh, all right. All patched up here anyway." The Doctor climbed out from beneath the console and wiped his hands on his trouser legs before grabbing Clara by the wrist. "Need me to introduce you like two kiddies on a play date?"

Clara shook her head in confusion as he guided her with rough enthusiasm down one of the meandering corridors of the TARDIS.

"No! Doctor! I can introduce myself, but..."

"Lovely," he interrupted as he launched her through the doors entering onto the vast expanse of books. "Back in a tick." And he disappeared back down the corridor, opposite the way they had come.

They man pacing the stacks was tall and young - maybe only a bit older than Clara, herself. He had a shaggy haircut and wore rumpled trousers and shirt, sleeves rolled to the elbows, with a slim vest and necktie. The frantic way he flitted about the aisles, searching through book titles, made her think he might be about to pull out a sonic of his own, declaring some impossible story as he did so. She approached him calmly and gave a gentle wave.

"Hello, there," she smiled. "Need help finding something?"

"Are you the librarian?" the man asked in a clean, American accent. He spoke to her, but kept his eyes clamped to the spines of the volumes in front of him.

"No. I'm Clara."

Finally, he turned to study her face.

"Do you know what language these are in?" he asked as his eyes darted quickly away from her again.

"Lots, I imagine. Don't really know. They all look the same to me." She took a half step back at the startled look he gave her at that.

"No. That's not... none of these symbols appear in any kind of pattern that would indicate a shared root language."

"Ah. Well... yeah... Doctor!" she called as she heard his tramp of footsteps entering the room. "Um... one minute," she shot out as she left him to go speak to the Doctor.

"How are you two getting on? He's really a lovely fellow, isn't he?"

"Who is he and why can he not read anything in here?" Clara demanded, concern and frustration warring in her voice.

"Yeah, it's the TARDIS Translation Matrix. Went a bit squiffy after the three-Doctor-day," he explained, fidgeting a bit. "But I've fixed it! Should be functioning again any minute..."

"What the hell?"

"Now!" The Doctor's grin widened with delight as the new passenger yelped in surprise.

* * *

"Um... one minute," the girl shouted over her shoulder as she sprinted to the library entrance. There was a tall man wearing a bowtie and suspenders standing there, greeting her. His sleeves were rolled up and he was fidgeting with some sort of pen or wireless remote.

The girl appeared to be about his age - maybe a year or two younger. She was dressed casually but expressively, yet she assumed an air of authority from the very beginning - offering to help him as though it was her job. He'd guessed librarian, but she could as easily be some sort of custodian or teacher.

Now, him... the man she was talking to was bouncing on his heels, showing both excitement and anxiety in his features in equal measure. Looking at him was like having caught Garcia doing something both delightful and forbidden on BAU servers. Spencer would need to speak to him before he made any kind of decent assessment.

Even in his dreams he couldn't stop profiling.

After watching the two exchange several excited sentences, he turned back to the books on the shelves in front of him.

"What the hell?" he yelped as he watched the text on the book spines transform to English lettering right in front of his eyes.

"Ah, yes. Should be much clearer for you now." The man walking excitedly towards him spoke with a British accent, just like the girl had.

"Are you the librarian?" Spencer asked of the man this time. He didn't think so, but he was looking for some part of his subconscious mind to give him an explanation of what was happening. A librarian in a library was worth looking for.

"I'm The Doctor and this is Clara," the man said with a broad grin, as if that was answer enough. He glanced expectantly between Reid and the girl, waiting for... what?

"Maybe one of you could help me out... Um, what's this about?" Direct approach.

"Everything!" the man - The Doctor - exclaimed.

He took off out of the doors of the building and Clara shrugged apologetically.

"Best to follow," she said, mentioning him ahead. "It'll all come clear soon. Usually. Hopefully." She made for the door, but something prompted Spencer to glance back over his shoulder – the feeling of eyes on him.

"Reid, a pretty girl tells you to follow, you go with her," said the encouraging voice of Derek Morgan. His colleague and close friend stood there in the middle of the expansive library behind him, where no one had previously been. Surprised at seeing the familiar face, Spencer blinked several times before focusing again on the spot where Morgan had just been standing.

There was no one there.

"Stay close," Clara shouted from the doorway. "You could get lost here for days if she wanted you to." Cryptic.

Taking a deep breath, Spencer reminded himself that this was only a dream, and followed her though the doors.

The exterior of the library revealed that they were still inside a larger space. Metal walkways and hatches lining the walls replaced the sidewalks and trees he had expected to see. He followed Clara down a large metal corridor, similar to what he would have expected to see in a submarine or an aircraft carrier. After several minutes of walking, she led him through a large door and into another spacious room. In the center he found the man who called himself The Doctor.

He stood at a large central console, tapping numbers out onto a small screen above the control panel.

"'Who are you?' 'What's going on?' 'Where are we?'," the man spouted out as he saw the two of them enter the room. "All good questions. And they all deserve the best of answers. So… as I said already, I'm The Doctor and this is Clara. And what is going on is a bit of a vacation of sorts. Well, for you a vacation, for me a vocation, and, well… for Clara it's likely just another Wednesday. And _where_ we are is only half of the question. The more intriguing aspect being _when. When_ are we?"

"I… can't even…" Spencer sputtered before he'd had time to think of a more meaningful response to the excited rambling.

"Well, of course you can't. We haven't properly met yet," The Doctor said, plainly. "But we're about to. Then it should be easier to understand." He pulled a lever and the room shook, knocking Spencer and Clara off balance for a moment. She toppled towards him and he had no other recourse but to catch her.

"Thanks," she nodded as he gripped her arms, holding them both steady. He couldn't say anything, still trying to organize his thoughts, cataloguing all of the information that he had gotten in the past five minutes. Something else he noticed… Clara was warm as she leaned against him. And solid.

As the shaking stopped and the strange whirring noise subsided, The Doctor let go of the console where he'd been bracing himself, and made a dash for a smaller set of wooden doors on the opposite side of the room.

"Take a look," he said, throwing the doors wide open.

Clara moved to the door first, stepping out gingerly onto the concrete floor outside. Spencer followed, an equal mix of curiosity and reluctance warring in the pit of his stomach.

They looked down onto one of the Quantico courtyards where Spencer sometimes went to have lunch. They must be standing on the roof of one of the building's parking structures.

"Doctor, can't anyone just look up and see us?" Clara asked as she surveyed the scene below.

"Not to worry. Perception filter. Just stay inside of arm's length from the TARDIS doors. It's like we're not even here. Nothing out of the ordinary."

"Handy," she said with a little whistle.

As Spencer looked down on the courtyard he could see the doors to the wing where the BAU was housed. After a few moments it swung open and two tall men exited and headed for a bench. Spencer watched himself walk across the courtyard with the man he had only moments ago come to know as The Doctor. They sat down and Spencer began setting up a chessboard on the bench between them.

"We're playing chess," he said, narrating the scene below.

"Yeah. Said you hadn't had a decent chess partner in years. Had to oblige at that."

"How did we meet?" Suddenly all other questions fell from his mind and Spencer allowed himself to run with the dream state that this was some sort of time travel scenario he was caught up in. If it was just a dream, what could be the harm? Sometimes a dream is just a dream. Right?

* * *

"How did we meet?" the man asked. Clara still hadn't heard his name. With his question, she watched the Doctor's smile widen. He was pleased. Not a lot of convincing to get this one to believe him. She wondered how seldom that happened in his travels.

"I was… consulting. On a case."

"What were the details?"

"Ah. I can't go telling you about future events. Mess with your time stream. Bad stuff, that. Hard to fix."

"That's a brilliant understatement!" Clara exclaimed. She couldn't help herself.

"But, if this is my future… and you brought me here to see my future self… how does that not…?"

"Well… I'm not telling you anything, am I? Just brought you about to enjoy the scenery." He smiled and chuckled to himself; proud of that one.

"The Doctor likes to cheat the rules," she explained to the man as he kept his eyes trained studiously on the courtyard.

"So, you can't tell me what we're saying." It wasn't a question but he said it with a tone of skepticism anyway.

"Only that you – that is, the you from then – suggested that you – which is to say, the you from now – could use a bit of a holiday!" The Doctor then turned to Clara and spoke as though the other man wasn't there. "He said this poor fellow was under loads of stress. About to bust apart at the seams. I offered a few suggestions. Pegasus 12, Liserian Falls, New Las Vegas…"

" _I_ told you that?" The other man barked back at The Doctor. "That I was…" His voice trailed off and his flare of anger seemed to dissipate as he turned back to face Clara and The Doctor.

"Listen… I know," The Doctor said gently.

"What do you know?" she asked as the man cringed away a bit at The Doctor's words.

"Quiet, Clara," he dismissed her, turning quickly back to the man. "The work you do – admirable work – it drains you."

"What work?" She was becoming suspicious now. The man had appeared in the Library without seeming to know where he was, or who either she or The Doctor were.

"Clara. Quiet." He quickly returned his attention to their guest, rattling on. "The work you do leaves you needing… craving… craving an escape. That's where I come in."

"What do you mean?" It was the mysterious man asking this time. Taking a step closer to The Doctor. Closer to the TARDIS.

"All of space and time. Anywhere you wanna go. Any _when_."

"Doctor!"

" _Clara!_ " She recoiled as he shouted at her without even turning to look at her.

She turned away from the stupid, stubborn, git, and made her way back into the TATDIS. As She headed down the ramp and into the console room she heard the man speak again.

"Okay," he said. "I'll go with you."

* * *

"Doctor!"

" _Clara_!"

Spencer looked past the man to the girl he'd just verbally beat back three times in less than a minute. She was turning to walk back through the bright blue doors of what looked like an old wooden telephone booth. It had a placard on the front that read 'Police Public Call Box'.

In the past few moments, Reid had learned a few things about the man who was standing in front of him, his body nearly humming with excitement. One was that he was kind of a bully.

"Hotch is a bully. Not a _great_ personality trait, but there are definitely worse to be had," said Prentiss from where she appeared at the threshold of the 'police box'.

Another thing Reid knew without a doubt about The Doctor was that he was sincere. He was a man who would help the BAU solve a case in the future. He was concerned about the job taking its toll on Reid. And he was offering a sort of pressure relief valve for it all.

"You don't have enough for a full profile," Emily said. "See what else you can get out of him."

"Okay," Reid nodded as he watched Emily disappear before his eyes. "I'll go with you."

"Spectacular!" The Doctor whirled around and headed for the door. "Notice anything about my ship?" he asked as Spencer followed him back on board.

"It's dimensionally un-equivalent."

"Heh," the man laughed humorlessly. "Most people just say 'bigger on the inside'. Except Clara."

"Where is Clara, anyway," Spencer asked as he glanced around what he gathered to be the bridge of the ship.

"She's…" Heavy sigh. "Around." Then, more quietly, "I shouldn't have shouted."

"Will she be alright?"

"Yeah. Oh, yes. Yes. Impossible girl." A wide smile spread across his face as he thought of her in that role. "You know what she said?" he asked conspiratorially. "She said, 'smaller on the outside'. Hehe."

"Yeah. How do you explain _that_?" Spencer was less concerned with the logistics, and more concerned with whether his subconscious mind was able to throw an explanation at him, or if – like so often happened in dreams – he would find himself suddenly in a different situation when his mind was presented with something it couldn't reconcile.

"It's technically called dimensional transcendence. Big words. Means that the exterior…"

"Exists in a different dimension than the interior," Spencer finished for him. He had read a theory about dimensional transcendence when he had been at Cal Tech.

"Very good, Dr. Reid!" The Doctor exclaimed. "It's called the TARDIS. Stands for Time And Relative Dimension In Space."

"That's clever," he said, less enthusiastically than his host. He was still skeptical.

"So. Where to… Spencer?"

"Surprise me," Spencer answered, turning to walk down the metal corridor he had traveled with Clara earlier.

As he walked down the hall, he felt like he was being led, or coached, into going a certain direction. The metal floor curved gently past closed doors, and only seemed to reveal to him the passages it wanted him to take. He mentally berated himself for thinking that way. After all a ship couldn't be sentient. But in a dream-state...

Finally, he came upon a lone catwalk leading to a heavy vault-like door. There was a window in the door and the light shining through it turned the small metal surroundings a dirty orange color.

At the foot of the door, back to its cold, thick metal barrier, sat Clara.

"What is it?" Spencer asked as he stopped his forward momentum only a handful of paces from where she sat.

"The eye of something or whatnot. Exploding or imploding, kept in a state of perpetual decay... something. Basically, you've stumbled upon the TARDIS engine room," she said, scoffing, with little humor.

"No," Spencer said, motioning to the object in her hands. "I meant, what is that?"

* * *

"No., I meant, what is that?"

Clara looked down at the leaf in her hands. It was her page one. But that wouldn't mean anything to him without some kind of drawn out explanation that she really didn't feel like going into just now. Instead she answered his question with a question of her own.

"Have you ever just _known_ that you were in the exact spot you were meant to be, at the exact moment you were meant to be there?"

"Well, not like I think you mean it," he began, words hesitant at first. "But I know that if I hadn't been certain places at certain times, some very... bad things... might've happened to a lot of people all over my country."

"You know... that is what the Doctor dose. He's in the right place at the right moment." She stood and walked closer to the man leaning against the catwalk rail and holding the leaf out for him to examine. "If the Doctor hadn't shown up outside of my bedroom window one night, and practically chased me into this great bloody blue box - I call it a snog-box." She caught the shadow of a grin on his face at that. "I would possibly – probably - be long dead right now. But he did show up, and he did save me... from a danger I'd've never known I was in. And he does it for lots of people. Whole world's of them..."

"But he can't save everyone."

"No he can't. And it kills him." She reached out and gingerly reclaimed her leaf from the man. "Before I met the Doctor, I never felt that right place, right moment feeling. Now..." _Since the time stream_...

"And the leaf?" the man asked again, gently.

Clara studied it for perhaps the millionth time in her short, many-lives, and realized that it had become more than her page one.

"Its a reminder that... What he's done matters. And now, what I do does as well." She smiled sadly up at the man standing next to her.

"Are you going to be alright?" he asked, his face an open book of sincerity.

"What, because he shouted?" she laughed dismissively. "I _will_ have you know that I can give as good as I get."

"I'm sure you can," he said, smiling, an ironic hint of caution in his voice.

Suddenly, something made Clara glance toward the corridor hatch. The Doctor galloped purposefully towards them. She was developing a sort of sixth sense where the Doctor was concerned.

"What are you doing way back here? You should be in the wardrobe," he scolded. "We're here."

"Where is here, Doctor?" Clara asked as they took off after him, quickly tucking her prized leaf back into her blazer pocket.

" _When_ is here?" their guest added cleverly as they dashed past the wardrobe and back into the console room.

"Doctor, our clothes," she prompted as they flew by.

"Ah, quite right. On second thought, never mind the change of clothes. Why not mix it up? That's what I always say."

"Fine. So then where... a-and _when_ are we?" she added, giving a nod to the other man.

"Acreie 67. Best blackjack tables in the Black Sun quadrant." He smiled, nearly unable to contain his excitement as he opened the TARDIS doors onto a glittering hotel lobby. "Its the _new_ New Las Vegas!"

"Because New Las Vegas was so ten minutes ago..."

 


	2. New, New Las Vegas

"Amy Pond, there's something you'd better understand about me 'cause it's important, and one day your life may depend on it: I am definitely a mad man with a box!"

_ The Doctor

* * *

"Because New Las Vegas was _so_ ten minutes ago..." Clara began with a sarcastic tilt of her head in The Doctor's direction.

"New Las Vegas?" Spencer asked, raising his eyebrows in skepticism.

"Ah, yes. After the flooding of the city in 2197. They rebuilt it bigger and better. More cards, more magic tricks, bigger elephants. Everything Las Vegas was about, only bigger. No less flood susceptible, unfortunately."

"Flooding?" Clara asked in surprise. "Isn't Nevada in the middle of a desert?"

"The parched landscape is actually a big part of the problem. Due to that and the ever-increasing amount of paved areas in the city, flash floods are a growing occurrence during the months of July, August, and September. Since 1960, the area has experienced at least 11 floods costing more than a million dollars each. In that same period, 31 lives were lost in 21 separate flash flood events." The regurgitation of the facts happened automatically like it did when he was brainstorming on a case with the team, and it made him feel more grounded in his surroundings. More comfortable. "It doesn't rain much more than 4.13 inches annually, but when that falls all at once, the landscape isn't really equipped to handle it."

"Oh," said Clara, nodding slowly.

"What year?" Spencer asked again.

"4700… ish," answered the Doctor. "Actually may be off by a bit. I was meant to have got us here for the Grand Rededication, but it looks…"

"It looks like a ghost town," Clara finished for him.

"Extremely ghost-town-esque," The Doctor agreed. "Lets find out why, shall we?" With that he took off across the gargantuan lobby towards an opulent reception counter. "Hello," he greeted the woman attending the registry. "We were meant to have been here in time for the rededication weekend. Perhaps we've missed it?"

"Welcome," said the woman – at least that's what Spencer thought she might be, even with the startlingly violet roots to her blonde hair. She looked at all of them a little robotically, but with a pleasant smile nonetheless, and began scrolling through the information on a glass pane in front of here.

"The rededication begins tomorrow evening. However, I cannot seem to locate your reservation in our system."

"But we haven't even given our names," Clara pointed out just as Spencer himself was thinking it.

"Biometric registry," the Doctor whispered aside to them. Then, to the receptionist, "Well you wouldn't. You see, this is an official visit." He removed from his inside coat pocket what looked to Spencer like a version of his FBI credentials.

The woman frowned for only a fraction of a second before regaining her composure. "Of course. My apologies, Sir. Please do accept an upgraded executive suite on behalf of the establishment."

"That'll do nicely, thank you," he answered back, bouncing on his toes again and grinning over his shoulder at Spencer and Clara. "I got us an _upgraded, executive suite_!"

"Well, how do you do, then," Clara smiled back at the Doctor. "Don't let it go to your head."

"Why don't you two head up to the suite," he said, handing them a small glass disc the receptionist had just passed him, that Spencer assumed was some type of keycard. "I'll take care of the Old Girl and see you there in just a tick."

"Right," Clara said hesitantly, looking around for some sort of clue as to where to go.

"The lift to your left will take you to the Skybridge," the woman behind the counter began saying, even as the Doctor headed back across the lobby toward the TARDIS. "At the end of the bridge you will take a right and descend to the lower platform. There will be eight banks of lifts down the length of the platform. You will take the last lift – it services all twenty executive levels. Your level is seven and your suite will be 7-2194. If you get lost please use any coms located in the halls and you will be connected back to reception." She smiled tightly at them before turning back to her registry screen.

"You got all that?" Clara asked as she began following Spencer toward the first lift mentioned.

"Word for word."

Once the elevator doors closed on them and they began climbing inexorably further from the lobby, Spencer felt comfortable enough to begin asking a few questions.

"Who's 'the old girl'?"

"Ha." She laughed without humor. "That's the TARDIS. Calls her that. Or, sometimes, sexy."

"Really?" he said with raised brows.

"Yeah. Bit of a thing going on between those two. But when you've been together for nearly two millennia, I suppose…"

"There's no… that's not… he's not…" Spencer stammered dumbly.

"He's not human, yeah? Two heartbeats. I've felt 'em. He's an honest to goodness alien."

"But… not that I'm denying the possibility of alien life, but… he would have to – any body – would have to age. Is it… cryonics, or… cloning…?"

"No to both… well, he's not exactly lived in the same body all those years. It's a bit like reincarnation, except… totally different. It's complicated."

"I can tell. You seem to have a fairly firm grip on it, though," he offered seriously. "I can totally relate to the feeling of being able to understand a thing without being able to effectively communicate that understanding to others."

Finally the doors opened onto a vast bridge enclosed in what appeared to be a long glass barrel. The bridge spanned the space of what Spencer estimated to be the equivalent of 2.37 football fields. Through the glass they could see what looked like a solid wall of skyscrapers on either side.

"He's a bit of a rollercoaster to get used to." She offered more of an easy smile now that they had settled into a rapport.

"How long have you two been together?" he asked.

"Oh! No! Not together," she gasped in surprise. "Never that. I mean I thought he was… just a _bit_ … in the beginning. But no."

"Okay," Spencer said in a soothing voice. He imagined she had had more than a bit of a crush on The Doctor for more than just a little while now. "I actually meant how long have you been doing this… traveling, I guess."

"Ah, well… that's actually another complicated… thing."

"But you are _human_? I mean one heart, one brain, ten fingers and toes." He chuckled.

They were nearly halfway across the bridge by now.

"Oh, one hundred percent human." But she bit at her lower lip in a way that said that she thought she might be holding something back. "And in almost no way qualified to time-travel. I'm an English teacher. I'm called 'Miss Oswald' by bratty preteens five periods a day. Before that, I was a nanny. I've been makin' my mum's soufflé for near on ten years and it falls every time I pull it outta the oven. I _should not_ be let loose in a casino hotel in the year 4700… ish."

"Wow," he nodded as Clara gulped in a lungful of air. "I'd say that's… very human."

* * *

"And you? What do you do?" Clara asked, eager to change the subject from how human she might be – she wasn't entirely sure how to explain the bit about jumping into the Doctor's time stream and what that may or may not have done to her. "I'd say you're a professor. Languages. Or… or an investigative journalist, eh?"

"Well, I do lecture occasionally, but I'm not a professor. And I also investigate, but I'm not a journalist."

She raised her eyebrows in skepticism. "Ah, tricky. Are you a researcher, then? Oh!" she exclaimed, suddenly wondering why she hadn't asked already. "What is your _name_ , pretty boy?"

"Ha!" he laughed, full and throaty. She liked the sound. "My co-worker calls me that." A brilliant smile, then. "My name's Spencer. Um… Dr. Spencer Reid. And I'm a Special Agent at the FBI's Behavioral Analysis Unit out of Quantico, Virginia. We study the behavior of violent offenders, allowing us to make a well formed prediction about the subject's possible subsequent actions in the hope of leading to an arrest."

"You're a profiler, yeah?" She exclaimed as they neared the escalators at the end of the bridge. He was looking at her in a bit of surprise when she glanced back at him. "Television can teach some things worth knowing," she said cheekily.

"True… I guess," he said skeptically. "So we're supposed to move down a level then take the elevator at the end of the platform up to level seven."

"You've a good memory," Clara pointed out.

"That would be an understatement."

"Huh. Modest too."

"I'm sorry. I'm not trying to brag – I don't mean to come off as proud or anything. It's just that… I have an eidetic memory. So, honestly, saying I have a good memory is literally an understatement."

"Okay." They had stepped onto the escalator and were heading down to the lower platform. Clara supposed that this Spencer was the kind of person who would give you a direct answer if asked a direct question. She wouldn't put lying past him – he was a member of law enforcement and he'd likely lied a lot when it was necessary to get the job done – but he had no reason to lie to her just now. "Hey, Spencer?" she asked after a few silent moments as they travelled toward the lower level.

"Hmm?"

"How exactly did you come to be on the TARDIS?"

"I came home after flying back to Quantico last night, I closed out my case notes, I went home and I went to sleep."

"Yeah. And then what?"

"Then I woke up in the… I guess it was the ship's library. You know the rest."

"The TARDIS. You woke up in the TARDIS' library?" She rounded on him as soon as they reached the floor of the platform. "No, 'how do you do, I'm the Doctor, like to roam 'round all of time and space with me and save worlds an'stuff'?"

* * *

She got really quiet and kept her arms crossed angrily over her chest for the rest of the commute to their suite.

"That is one seriously unhappy little woman," Rossi said as they rode the elevator up to level seven. "I should know. All three of my wives were experts at that look."

"Did I do something to upset you?" Spencer asked softly as the elevator sounded off the seventh beep and the doors whooshed open quietly.

"No…" she answered just as quietly, letting her arms drop and trying to relax her posture as they stepped out into the hall. "No. _You_ didn't."

"Oh."

"Somebody's got some 'splainin' to do." Reid watched Rossi dematerialize as they reached the hotel room door.

"You've got the key thingy."

"Yeah, sorry." He'd been a little preoccupied. Reaching into his right pocket, he pulled the strange disc out and studied it. "Okay. So maybe..." Spencer turned the disk around in his hand, scrutinizing it while Clara reached out to inspect the door for some sort of a corresponding lock. "Or, if I turn it this way..."

Just then, the door swung open and the Doctor stuck his head out.

"We'll work on keys and locks later. What took the two of you so long?! I was about to send a search party. And by send a search party, I mean form one. And by form one, of course, I mean grab a torch and hit the halls myself."

"Awfully sorry to keep ya waitin'," Clara snapped as Spencer followed her into the suite, wondering how the Doctor had beat them all the way here anyway. "Where _did_ you run off to, anyway?"

"Ah! Yes! The money. Had to take care of the money. Also needed to exchange parking spaces," he said, motioning to the TARDIS sitting in one of the adjoining bedrooms. He then reached deeply into his inside coat pocket and pulled out a neatly folded stack of notes. "There you are. For you. And you. For the gambling tomorrow." The Doctor smiled broadly as he passed both Spencer and Clara five bills a piece.

"What is it?" Clara asked as she examined the thin sheets of paper. Spencer thought briefly about the feeling everyone had had when the new U.S. currency designs had debuted a few years ago.

"Five nottems, notches, something. I can't be expected to remember every different galactic currency!"

"Do you know how much it is in dollars?" Spencer asked, slipping the notes into the pocket with the room key-disc.

"Eh. Roughly... Seventy-five."

"Dollars?"

"Thousand. In U.S. dollars. 47,837.47 British pounds."

"Oh my god," Clara breathed out heavily as she stared at the money in her trembling hands. "That's more than my year's salary."

"Don't blow it all on one game," the Doctor said, helpfully. "That's what they say. Don't blow it all on one game. How would _that_ be any fun?"

"I need to sit down," she said, wandering toward the seating arrangement in the main room of their suite.

That left the two men standing awkwardly across from each other in the entryway. Spencer shoved his hands deeper into his pants pockets. The Doctor caught a glimpse of himself in the wall mirror by the door and began playing with the floppy bangs hanging over his forehead.

"Never a fez around when you really need one." He smoothed the hair down as well as he could and began fiddling with his bow tie instead.

"Doctor? I was wondering..."

"I wear them because the're cool."

"What? No." The look on Spencer's face must've been comical. "I was wondering what you showed the desk clerk that got us this room."

"Yeah. Nice little bit of technology, that is, yes. Don't use it much these days but it's usually a quick fix if I'm in a hurry."

"Or if your bein' lazy," Clara piped up from the couch, sounding slightly more steady.

"Sorry. What is it?" Spenser prompted again.

"Psychic paper. Projects any information you need to convince someone of - or the assumptions of the reader about the user - onto itself. Use it with authority, your an authority figure." He pulled out the small leather folio and thrust it in Spencer's face. "See for yourself. What does it say I am?"

"A deeply repressed facet of my subconscious mind manifesting itself during a dream state during a time of extreme stress."

"Yeah. There, you see? A manifestation of... of what? I'm sorry! Your subconscious?"

"Obviously," Spencer confirmed, stepping back from the Doctor and his offended outburst. "I know, logically, that I need a healthy form of stress relief and my subconscious is supplying me with a healthy distraction."

"A distraction?! Well... so maybe I am that. But... Dream state?! I am no such..."

"Will you shut up! Both of you! And stay shut up!"

* * *

Both men turned to look at her as though she'd spouted a second head.

"Doctor?" She said, lowering her voice to a more civilized volume. He raised his eyebrows in acknowledgement. "Did you make the TARDIS materialize around Spencer's bedroom set?" There was only silence in response as the Doctor shuffled his feet with a guilty look on his face. "No need to answer, then. Got it. Spencer?"

"Yes?" he answered with a slight gulp to his whisper.

"You just... went to bed in your flat and woke up in this vast library, and you carry on, no questions asked?"

"Well, I um…"

"You deserve each other!" She shouted again, standing in her fir of frustration. "He kidnaps you…"

"Only a bit," The Doctor interrupted, defending his actions.

"Zip it! And you!" Clara rounded on Spencer. "I mean, is it not your business to question the suspicious? Well, didn't you think that your bed and chest of drawers appearing in the middle of a gigantic library was a bit… off?"

"I dream about books all the time," Spencer squeaked back at her.

"Dream state my foot," she heard the Doctor mutter under his breath as he crossed his arms and turned away from the both of them.

"I am _one hundred percent_ in agreement with the Doctor on that one. I assure you, I am _very_ _real_!" At that, The Doctor turned back to give her a blazing smile. "I'm still cross with you."

"You'll get over it. Besides… I would've taken him home if he'd wanted." Clara sniffed in skepticism. "Well, I would've."

"Look," Spencer piped up, more surety to his voice. "Either way you look at it, it's my choice to be here."

"Ah! Logic takes the stage," the Doctor said in an amused voice.

But Clara wasn't finished fuming yet. She'd need a proper cuppa, some crap telly, and some time away from the Doctor before she could stomach his snappy remarks again. "We haven't got anywhere to get to till tomorrow, yeah? Well I don't fancy lookin' at you _or_ your chin till at least morning. Jog on. Go polish a compression coil or something."

"Well, _I never_ …"

She almost wished she could snap a picture of the startled look on his face. As it was she was doing her best not to smile and give away her own amusement. She'd be over her anger in barely an hour at this rate.

"I might just do," The Doctor announced, heading quietly for the far bedroom where his TARDIS was parked. "Bit of other tidying to do as well. Have a bedroom set in my library doesn't belong there, haven't I?" As he stepped through the TARDIS doors she heard the engines whir to life. Spencer looked startled, turning to worried as the box de-materialized in front of him.

"No worry," she said, trying to calm him. "He's probably just off to return your furniture to it's proper place in your timeline."

"Sure," the man said as he headed for the sitting arrangement where she had taken up residence.

"There's gotta be a kettle 'round here somewhere. I always fancy a real proper cup of tea after the Doctor and I've had verbal blows. Fancy one?"

 


	3. The Trouble With Dreams

A/N: So, in answer to a question about why Spencer may be seeing his teammates while gallivanting around Space and Time with The Doctor and Clara: Spoilers ;)

Also. I'm a bad girl. I said spoilers through DW7x15... I _really_ meant spoilers through DW8x11/12.

I have at least three more chaps written just waiting to be proofread and edited. I'm doing that between finishing the actual fic and RL. Thanks for the patience. Glad you enjoy!

* * *

"Unfortunately, a super-abundance of dreams is paid for by a growing potential for nightmares."  
\- Sir Peter Ustinov

* * *

It took Clara some time to locate the hot water kettle and something passing for either strong tea or weak coffee – Spencer wasn't quite sure which was the better description.

"You get used to eatin' and drinkin' all kinds of different foodstuff when you keep company with him," she said as he made a face at the bitter taste of his drink. They had been unsuccessful at locating any sweetener packets. "Why are you so keen to believe he's a lie of your mind?" she asked, suddenly changing the subject. "I mean… I get it. Time traveling alien from outer space who happens to be a stuck-up ponce most of the time, but is generally a good guy… That'd be hard for anyone to swallow. But, what about me? How am I so unbelievable?" She looked hurt when she said it, and he knew instinctually that it was genuine.

He opened his mouth to answer, then, almost immediately closed it again. She let him take his time as she sat cross-legged on the floor next to him sipping her tea. They were leaned back against the front of the oversized sofa in the 'upgraded, executive suite' that they would share during their time here – whatever that meant. The decor was plush and extravagant, a lot like a casino hotel room would be expected to be, but certainly nothing like what he would imagine in an extraterrestrial world. He wasn't sure if that meant it was more believable, or less so.

That was the problem. Clara Oswald – teacher, Miss Clara Oswald – seemed real. And completely believable.

"So… something I guess you need to know about me… to understand my reluctance to… No. Okay. When I was a kid there was _nothing_ , literally nothing in my daily life that was normal. And that was what I grew up knowing. I was a child prodigy attending a Las Vegas public high school at the age of twelve years old. I graduated from MIT at fifteen. And the first time I realized my mother wasn't… that my mother had a mental disorder, I was seven years old."

"Oh…" Clara breathed out softly.

"My mother sees people who aren't there. She hears voices that aren't speaking to her. And she imagines herself to be playing a part in vast, grandiose fantasies that could never possibly take place. Now… schizophrenia is… unpredictable."

"But just because she has it, doesn't mean…" Clara started, but he held up a hand to silence her.

"So… let me put it this way. If you were trying to tell a lie – a really big lie – what would be your best chance to get someone to believe it?"

"Oh. Okay." She sat still for a moment with her eyes closed, seriously considering his question. He smiled at her sincerity in spite of himself. "I would… establish some sort of trust first. Make myself a reliable source – someone… believable… Oh my stars." She looked up at Spencer with a profound expression of disappointment on her face. "That's why you don't believe me. I'm too good to be true. Too true to be real. God, now I'm starting to sound like him. Like the Doctor."

"Most schizophrenic delusions are wrapped up in just enough truth to be believable. It's the minds way of protecting itself against a full psychotic break." He sat his drink to the side as she shook her head in defeat. "So, Clara, what I _can_ believe about you is one of three things: You, and all of this are real; you are part of a sequence of events created by my subconscious to allow my overtaxed brain to rest; or… this isn't real, and this isn't a dream, and the only reason you're here is to protect me."

"Bollocks," she said flatly. They both chuckled, her words breaking into the tension created by his impromptu confession. "Maybe it's not so bad, you thinking I'm a dream. Could be worse. Oi! I get to be the girl of your dreams," she finished with a smile.

"Yeah… I guess so."

A few hours later, the doctor was still gone with his police box and Clara had convinced him to look through Earth Classics Television on the suite's entertainment console. She said she'd wanted to catch next season's episodes of _Sherlock_ ahead of time, if she could find them. It was apparently one of the perks of traveling with The Doctor – early previews. But for some reason they didn't have the show at all and Clara agreed to watching classic _Star Trek_ with him instead.

"Doctor?" she said from where she was lounging on the sofa next to him. He started looking around the room, expecting to see the blue box and the obnoxious man back in one of the bedrooms. "No, silly. You-doctor! Doctor Spencer."

"Oh," he smiled sheepishly as he turned his attention back to the screen. It was an episode he'd watched many times as a kid, and had resulted in his wanting a cat for about a year – _The Trouble with Tribbles_. "What's up?" he asked, trying to be colloquial.

"The Doctor mentioned that… well I guess he alluded to that… I dunno, you'd had some trouble or something recently."

"He did." It wasn't a denial, but he wasn't confirming anything with it either.

"Wanna talk 'bout it?" She was so calm and casual in her manner with him, that he almost felt obliged to answer as if Morgan or Penelope had asked the question, not a five foot two inch tall girl from Blackpool – he was pretty sure it was Blackpool. "I take your silence to mean a polite, yet firm no. See it's just that I had this sort of… episode, you might call it, last spring. I failed to make a supremely perfect soufflé, I opened the post, and then I fainted. Like I _never_ did! An' then when I woke up, I was off followin' the Doctor… to the place of his death."

Spencer hit the pause button on the console controller.

"I met the Doctor's dead wife – didn't even know he'd been married, ya know? And I… did something very stupid. I saved him. I rescued him. Doesn't matter from what. Neither here nor there. But that's when I started mattering. Knowing I was in the right place at the very right time. So… I know a bit about having some trouble, or going through a thing. And I know when I'm in the right place at the right time, though usually it's to _save the Doctor_ , but I think, this time, I'm just here to listen."

"Thanks," he whispered around the lump in his throat. If there was anyone he might unburden himself to right now, it was this girl. This London schoolteacher. He'd already let out more of his past to her in the first few hours of knowing her than he had to his best friends in the first few years of working together at the BAU. But he wasn't feeling steady enough just yet. "So, tell me about the Doctor's wife."

"Oh, golly! So her name is River and he met her for his first time in a library in the fifty-first century when he was nine hundred and something, I think. That was the day she died… And he met her for her first time in 1938 Berlin when she was trying to kill Hitler. He was in his eleven hundreds by then… or maybe not… It's all very…"

"Complicated?" Spencer supplied.

"Nail on the head."

* * *

Clara had been sleeping for a few hours by the time Spencer began to feel the weight of sleep pressing on him. But, to be honest, he hadn't exactly been keeping track of time, expecting to wake up at any minute.

She had folded her blazer neatly and wedged it under her head, while clutching one of the many, plush throw pillows to her chest. He'd laughed at that, as the blazer pillow had been completely unnecessary, but she did it anyway.

When he was able to hear the slow, wheezing whisper of Clara's snorting, Spencer switched the entertainment console to encyclopedia mode.

"Garcia would be proud," he muttered to himself.

Under the heading _Earth History_ , he typed in the name Clara Oswald. It was a broad query and he couldn't logically hope for any kind of targeted results, but he felt his eyebrows rise nearly to his hairline when there were nearly a thousand results returned.

"Oh, my sweetly languishing Luddite. Lemme see what might help us out here," Garcia cooed as she leaned over the console controller. "How old is she? Try that."

Spencer typed _age 25 - 30_ into the search field. Narrowing some.

"What about... Oh! Run an image search associated with her name and age."

Spencer made the appropriate changes to the query.

"There, that's her, right?" Garcia yelped pointing to a staff photo of the young English teacher. "Ok. Search for only similar images."

He looked back at the manifestation of the spunky technical analyst in confusion.

"Right cli... erm, control... No! Oh just hold your finger there and it should bring up drop-down options. Very good, Doctor," she encouraged. "Now toggle back for information containing only similar images."

The list of results shrank again to a little more than three dozen.

"Afraid that's the best I can do for you off sight. Hope you find what you're looking for." After a moment of silence, he was sure she had gone, but she spoke again, startling him so that he nearly jumped. "She's a real beauty. Be careful there. I can tell she fights fiercely for what she loves."

Spencer nodded silently, agreeing with his friend.

"She's bossy, though!" Her voice startled him again and his pulse jumped a bit this time, too. "Oh, sorry! Okay. Bye, hun!"

There had been nothing written in depth about her in their contemporary time. A few teaching awards that she would be given in the late twenty-teens, and her CV, which said she'd received her teaching certification in late 2012. That was weird because she spoke as though she'd been teaching a little while already. But... it was only October of '11.

 _Dream state_ , he reminded himself.

Scrolling down, Spencer read a small obituary for someone named Daniel Pink - a teacher at her school - that mentioned a Ms. Clara Oswald as his girlfriend.

He glanced back at her, sleeping soundly on the couch behind him. She hadn't mentioned a Dan, Danny, or Daniel. But the obit was dated 2014. Maybe they hadn't met yet.

The next entry was converted from city records of London circa 1892. That couldn't be the same Clara, but as he kept reading he saw a sepia photo of a young Victorian era beauty. With the high silk collar and the hair twisted up on top of her head, it took him a few more moments to realize... but that couldn't be her.

She was memorialized in the paper as 'beloved governess and faithful friend', Clara Oswin Oswald, aged 26. She was declared dead of exposure to the elements on 25 December, 1892.

Oswin. He'd just scrolled past the blog of an Oswin Oswald from the year 4686. She had been Junior Entertainment Manager on the lost Starliner _Alaska_.

And her picture...

In the _very small_ allowance that this was _somehow_ not a dream... it would be impossible.

 _My impossible girl_ , the Doctor had called her. Could that be what he meant?

Spencer scrubbed his face with his hands, feeling the familiar pinpricks behind his eyes that meant he needed to catch at least an hour or two of sleep.

Glancing behind him again, he saw her, sound asleep. Maybe she was a mystery. Maybe she was something new he could puzzle out…

He leaned his head back and closed his eyes. Just for a while.

* * *

"Clara!"

She opened her eyes and groaned at the sound.

"Clara! Hello?" There was a small window popped up on the video screen of the entertainment console. The Doctor's face peered out, waving arms invading the edges of the screen. "Hello?"

"Doctor, where are you?" She asked the small picture groggily. "Still sulking?"

"I don't sulk," he declared, but it wasn't very convincing. "I need your help. Now, can you do that for me or are you still too cross?"

"What do you need?" She swung her legs off of the large sofa in an effort to get to her feet. In the process she managed to kick poor Spencer in the face, waking the sleeping doctor.

"Ow!" he muttered irritably, swatting at her feet.

"Oh, wonderful. You're both awake."

"What's happening about me?" Spencer asked, pressing the heels of his palms into his eyes as he came fully to his senses.

"How many people did you pass on your way to the suite last night?" The Doctor demanded.

"About a dozen…?" Clara sputtered, trying to remember.

"Nineteen. Thirteen men and six women," Spencer said as he stretched, more sure in his answer than she felt she had the right to be.

"More than likely a few less than half that number were Flesh, or Gangers," he said coolly with a look of nostalgia on his face. "You remember, Clara, don't you? The solar storms?"

"The what? Solar…?"

"Oh… no, that was Pond, wasn't it? _Not_ good, Doctor," he chided himself for forgetting.

"Doctor! Back to it, yeah?" She felt bad for snapping so soon after their row, however small it might have been, but he was like a squirrel herding kittens. And right now he needed her to keep him focused.

"Yes. Sorry. Well, basically the 'Gangers' are the human engineered, genetic double of a person. They hook into a harness somewhere and their 'Ganger' goes to do all of the unpleasantness instead, if need be. But I'm sure in this case it's more an issue of being in two places at once that's the appeal of them."

"'Genetic double'?" Spencer asked with a confused look on his face.

"Yes, yes. That isn't the point. How many children did you see?" he asked from the video screen in front of them.

"None," both Clara and Spencer chorused, glancing at one another, a little startled at the sensation.

"Exactly!" The doctor ran to the far end of the frame and swung 'round the TARDIS console display screen, motioning to it with both hands.

Clara squinted a couple of times, trying to make out the information on the second screen, but it was no good.

"But, Doctor… we arrived in the middle of the night… or night-cycle. Children should be tucked up, asleep."

"It's the Grand Rededication weekend! There should be thousands… just the children, Clara! When you went on holiday with your parents as a child, did you go to sleep when told?"

"No… when I was twelve I snuck out of my… hotel room…"

"Not a single child wandering the halls looking for midnight treats, or a soda machine? Not one?"

Now Clara was beginning to get the picture. "Oh my stars, " she breathed out in a whisper, her mother's words. Words of wonder or shock. Or, in this case, words of dread.

"What do you mean, 'not one'?" Spencer asked, at attention now.

"Well… not none, but not enough. And if it hadn't been for you, Doctor, I would never have begun looking in the first place."

"What are the statistics?"

"What?" Clara asked, still trying to cope with what the Doctor had just dropped on them first thing in the morning, easy as you please. That the fate of other innocents, children, no less, was somehow coinciding with their place at his specific time in the universe.

"Sending them to the controller pad now," The Doctor said, seeming to ignore her question altogether.

The screen of the console's controller pad – the whole thing looked like a fancy tablet to her – lit up with figures. Spencer snatched it off of the end of the sofa and began swiping at the glass a little awkwardly.

"I thought to myself, once I'd got the bed set back to its proper spot… 'What must the psychic paper've said indeed to get us this suite?' So, I took a peek into the registry."

"And?" she prompted.

"Something much more interesting – no, disturbing – something disturbing made itself known to me. Grand Rededication and all that going on, you'd be bound to have a packed house. And by all indications of stories I've heard – first hand accounts of friends, news articles, etcetera – they should be absolutely full up. There should have been no room for little old us but under the kitchen cupboards. There should be people here – loads of people – well… Flesh Avatars, Zephadines, the odd Ood, as well as Humans. Where have they all gone?"

"One million rooms in the hotel, assuming an average of at least two adults per room, with another twenty seven thousand eight hundred and two children collectively registered for childcare or other family geared activities. That's two million twenty seven thousand eight hundred and two people registered to be occupying the hotel by tomorrow. Assuming at least thirty percent don't check in until tomorrow and another eight percent no-show entirely, there should be a total of roughly one million two hundred fifty seven thousand two hundred thirty seven occupants right now."

Clara tried not to be bowled over by the figures Doctor Reid had just rattled off mechanically. He must be out of breath. Though she couldn't help catching the momentary grin on The Doctor's face as Spencer spoke. It was quickly masked by a look of gravity, one she had seen before.

"TARDIS scans for life forms place occupancy at a cool ninety eight thousand two hundred and twenty six."

"That's a deficit of one million one hundred fifty nine thousand and ten people…" Now Spencer looked as awed as Clara had been at his sheer ability to spit out numbers like a calculator.

"And out of all of those twenty seven thousand – nearly twenty eight thousand children… The TARDIS is picking up only three hundred and eight."


	4. Day To Day

If you shut up truth and bury it under the ground, it will but grow, and gather to itself such explosive power that the day it bursts through it will blow up everything in its way.  
\- French Novelist, Emile Zola

* * *

"Oh… my…" he heard Clara murmur beside him.

"How could over one point one million people disappear and no one notice?" he mumbled in disbelief, not really expecting an answer.

"They couldn't," The Doctor spoke in his own dazed voice, a blank look settling over his face. Something in Spencer's instincts told him to _pay attention_. Something was happening. He knew that look from years of brainstorming with the best profilers in the FBI. An epiphany.

"Well, what could _take them_ , then, and no one notice?" Clara asked, still awed by the realization of what was happening around them.

"Nothing. No one. You see, that's it. Someone _must've_ noticed!" he shouted, clapping his hands together. "Oi, I'm so _thick_! So absolutely rubbish! I should have realized!" He focused back on the screen again and started waving his hands around excitedly. "Don't you see? Oh, _I_ should have seen it…. Children go missing and someone notices. Anywhere. Not just in your time, in your country, Doctor Reid. One child and _someone_ is missing them. Multiple children from one common place, and many someones notice. But thousands, and… and nothing? It isn't possible."

"We need to talk to the hotel staff," Reid jumped into the middle of the monologue as soon as the other man paused for breath. "The desk clerk didn't mention anything when we checked in, but she might have been advised not to by higher management."

"Yeah. Kidnappings – disappearances – whatever you're calling it, can't be good for PR," Clara added, reaching for her blazer.

"Yes. Bad for business during the biggest grossing weekend of the hotel's history. Can't have that, can they?"

"Doctor, well be ready to go talk to the staff in just a tick. Where are you, anyway?" Clara asked as she slipped her jacket and shoes back on.

"Yes. Well. About that… I'm in the TARDIS. And the TARDIS is… in impound."

"Impound?" the two humans chorused. It was becoming a regular thing for them.

"Forget it. No worries!" he said with a smile that was, at that moment, too cheerful for their current situation.

"So just… pop it out," Clara said tensely, running her fingers through her hair, attempting to make it behave once again.

"Can't," the other man said flatly, deflating a bit.

"What do you mean, you can't? The old cow could get out of just about anything if she puts her, erm, circuits to it."

"'Just about' doesn't encompass an impound damper with a deadlock seal."

Spencer half listened to Clara argue with the Doctor about the best way to get the time machine out of lock and key. His brain was busy trying to decide where to start. He usually had more information by the time a case made it to the BAU. Serial abductors were no new thing, but the numbers… The numbers didn't matter. When a single child went missing, time was the first and most important factor that they could look at. And no matter how late they'd come to the game, the clock had already started ticking.

"Can _you_ get out, Doctor?"

"Of course," he said changing his focuss to Spencer. "What do you think I am, a novice? Besides, it's really just like a timey-wimey sort of 'boot' anyway. Just keeps her in place. I am one hundred percent mobile!"

"Then, Clara and I will meet you in the main lobby in forty five minutes. We need to work fast to establish a timeline for when the bulk of the children went missing – when they were last seen, where they were last seen, and by who."

"Brilliant. Clara, go to the bureau in the TARDIS' bedroom. I tossed the psychic paper down somewhere in there before I left. It should help open a few doors to get you started. Hurry," he urged her.

"The TARDIS's room, indeed… old cow."

"Spencer?" he whispered when Clara had moved out of sight.

"Yeah," he answered quickly as he sat down to tie his shoelaces.

"I can see the information you've pulled up on the screen, there. And Clara knows better than to look into her own future timeline." He paused pointedly waiting for Spencer to give him his full attention. "You can't let her know. And I mustn't have any more details than I've already stumbled upon. That may well be too much."

"Doctor, _I_ don't even understand what I've read tonight. How can I have read about her in an article that's…almost a hundred and twenty years old?"

"Or… yeah, twenty eight hundred years old, relative to our current space-time coordinates," The Doctor began scrubbing his face with his hands. "Spencer… all of those other 'Claras' aren't important. She lived and died all of those lives already, in just an instant. What is important is _our Clara_. She is the one that must be protected… from future events."

"I don't even know how to…"

"That's not important." Suddenly the information that Garcia had helped him gather on Clara Oswald dissolved from the background of the screen as the doctor fiddled with his sonic screwdriver from the other end of the video feed. "She _cannot_ see any of it. The future can be re-written only if you haven't read it yet. Once you know your own future, you've created a _fixed point_. Impossible to maneuver around or manipulate for a different result."

"Managed to throw it _behind_ one of the bureaus, Doctor," Clara snapped as she made her way back into the main room of the suite. "You ready, yet?" she asked Spencer.

"…Yeah."

* * *

"He told you it, didn't he? About me…" They had gone the entire way to the main lobby in silence. Silence was beginning to be a not unusual thing on this trip. Tense silences and too much time to think.

"He told me what?" Spencer replied, coolly. She got the feeling he wasn't a very good liar unless he was focused. And right now he was focused on finding all those poor kids. And so should she be.

"Nothing. Never mind. Here they come."

The housekeeping manager, along with the daycare coordinator, came walking up from a hallway tucked behind the large reception desk.

"Hello. I'm Vara Kinsey and I manage housekeeping. This is Selah Laus, our Children's Activities coordinator," said a woman with bright green eyes and bronze hair. Her skin was tinted like dark wood and her hair seemed very willowy, hanging loose to her shoulders. Clara wondered absently if she might be from some kind of forest planet. The other woman, Selah Laus, looked more domestically born (though who knew what was domestic in the year 4700-ish?), with a short, ashen blonde haircut and silvery-blue eyes. With her delicate features, she reminded Clara of the actress, Mia Farrow. Then her mind jumped to _the film_ , and that combined with the fact that she was working so closely with the children here, made Clara shiver.

"It does get a bit chilly in the big lobbies," Selah whispered, inclining her head towards Clara.

"Pleasure," Spencer said with a decided lack of pleasantness to his voice. He kept his hands crossed in front of him as the three woman exchanged handshakes cordially. "I'm Dr. Spencer Reid with The Shadow Proclamation." It was the organization that the Doctor had instructed them to reference. "This is my colleague, Miss Clara Oswald. Thank you for coming to speak with us this morning. I'm sure you must be incredibly busy with preparations."

"A good housekeeper is never 'busy with preparations', Mr. Reid. If that were the case, I wouldn't be doing my job properly, would I?"

"Touché," he said more conversationally, with a slight smile.

"Uh, we were wondering… that is… um…" Clara stuttered, suddenly second guessing injecting herself into the conversation.

"You might have heard of some vandalism in the area? We were alerted that you called about a strange man trying to access registry records last night." Helpful in some ways, was the Doctor, Clara thought. He had also alerted them to the vandalism as a pretext for gaining access to interview the hotel staff.

"Yes, but we haven't had any vandalism in the hotel ourselves, Dr. Reid," Selah spoke up again, though so softly one had to strain to hear her.

"Well it's the sort of thing that young kids might do. Adolescents and pre-adolescents. Males would be more likely to engage in a destructive group activity in order to begin asserting their masculinity, but girls shouldn't be ruled out."

"You can't think its one of the children from the hotel could you? Oh, but all that vandalism has taken place at night. They're back in the parents' care by that time." The children's care coordinator was wringing her hands in worry.

"What are you proposing?" Vara asked Spencer as Clara placed a comforting hand on the other woman's shoulder to ease her worry a bit.

 _If only she knew what we were really getting up to_ , she thought.

"I was hoping we could interview some of your subordinates from each branch, simply to see if they had noticed anything suspicious in the last few days. People hanging around, maybe where they had no good reason to be, for instance. Or maybe a child at one of the activities centers, or at the daycare, acting strangely."

"Just a few questions, that's all," Clara assured the slight woman across from her. Miss Head Housekeeper didn't seem to need any assuring.

"Well, it's all right with me. My people are all ahead of schedule at this point. A few minutes apiece won't cause tidal waves. But I _do_ think it is a waste of your time, Mr. Reid. Our staff would have reported anything strange happening. Especially so close to Rededication."

"I'm just trying to do my job, Miss Kinsey," Spencer said with a perfect air of civil servitude to his voice.

"Its Mrs. All Housekeepers are called Mrs. in polite society, Mr. Reid."

"Doctor Reid," he corrected, smiling disingenuously.

"They didn't even ask to see our credentials," Clara said, letting out a breath of relief as the two managers disappeared back into the distant hallway.

"It doesn't mean they won't." He had a distant look on his face.

"Funny thing the vandalism happening at the same time," she suggested as he stared further off at an object that was eluding her vision. She was about to open her mouth to say more when she was nearly knocked over, and thoroughly winded, as a man suddenly slammed into both of them.

"Good to see you two haven't disappeared yet!" the Doctor exclaimed as he clapped them both into a great, awkward hug.

"Is that exactly likely to happen?" She asked, a little startled at the thought. She'd obviously realized that simply _being_ with the Doctor had never actually _improved_ her statistics for survival. Quite the opposite more than a few times, in fact. But that realization never stopped being frightening each time it happened.

"There's a precedent for it," he said, visibly effected by some far off memory. He muttered something that sounded like _Manhattan_.

"We have access to some of the lower level staff. Day care workers, maids. They're setting up a small conference room for interviews, now," Spencer said, ignoring the previous exchange.

"Good. Excellent. Love a good interview."

"Sorry," Clara interrupted. "What happened in Manhattan?"

"Lot's of things happen in Manhattan," the Doctor answered without really answering. "Now, about that vandalism. Yes, funny thing, that. Only, I think it might actually have something to do with this… whole..." he motioned to the empty lobby, a disgusted look on his face. "Quagmire of events."

"What makes you say that?" Maybe he'd answer _this_ question.

"Something Dr. Reid said about the children acting out." That look of epiphany suddenly overwhelmed his features. "You two can handle the interviews, yeah? 'Course you can. Spencer's an old pro. Clara, let me see your phone."

She handed it over as instructed with a skeptical look on her face. The Doctor's screwdriver was soon put to it, and the signal boosted, "Sort of like buying a SIM card from Vodafone to make your US mobile work in the UK," The doctor explained as he preformed the same ritual on Spencer's phone. "Except _my_ data package is free," he said with a smile.

"He says that to all the girls," Clara snarked as he handed Spencer's phone back to him, pocketing hers.

"Now we can keep in touch. Be sure to call me if you've gotten anywhere with your interviews. Or if you find anything else interesting. Oh! Or if you get disappeared. Definitely call me if you disappear!"

"Doctor!" she cried as he began sprinting toward the lobby exit. "Where are you going?"

"Taking a close up peek at the vandalism," he called back.

"Why?"

"He's going to see if they've left some kind of a message." That same look of epiphany was now covering Spencer's features. "When children experience trauma…"

"Like twenty thousand of your mates disappearing?"

"… It could manifest in a million different possible ways," he continued through her interruption. "But when a child is prevented from, or unable to communicate that trauma… for whatever reason…"

"They find a way," Clara finished for him.

* * *

They were led to a small conference room near the back of the hallway leading off of the far end of the lobby. It was warm and Clara shrugged off her blazer. Spencer ran his hands through his hair, forgetting the way that it made his locks stand up, erratic and unruly. He motioned to the seats opposite the door. The staff would be coming in, a few at a time, for broad questioning in small groups. He could narrow down from that larger number who they should spend their time questioning more closely. Normally he would do the preliminary whittling down in a police station or the round table room, back at Quantico before anyone would even be brought in for questioning. And he would prefer it that way. People were easier to categorize more quickly when laid before him on paper. But that didn't mean he couldn't pick out certain behavioral characteristics in a crowd.

_You're mad that Hotch and I controlled our micro expressions at the hospital and you weren't able to detect our deception._

He shook his head trying to get her voice to stop. She'd been wrong then, and she'd lied to him for months, but knowing that didn't stop her words from causing him to second-guess himself.

"You okay?"

"Yeah, I'm fine," he snapped as Clara took her seat next to him. But she seemed un-phased.

"Just, you look a bit… gray. Like, your color's gone."

"I'm impersonating a law enforcement officer. That's not exactly something I have to do, day-to-day," he said, trying to mask his real unease.

"No. Nor me," she said as she folded her hands very prettily on the table in front of her. "But you've lied to get information that would help you solve cases before, yeah? Maybe to find missing children?"

"Yeah."

"So, do you really have a problem with this?"

"I really don't," he confirmed, just as the first group came walking in.

They were abled to conduct each set of interviews fairly quickly, but it still took nearly three hours before they had a tightly defined group of people to focus on. Their main interest was officially on two day care workers and the children's catering manager. In addition to those three, Spencer felt the need to keep a tight leash on Vaus and Kinsey.

Clara tapped her pen against the edge of the table. "So… we thought we were down thousands of kids, but it's really more like a number of eight or ten, yeah?"

"Eleven," he corrected. They had been given access to registration records about halfway through the process. The overwhelming majority of the 'missing' children's families had canceled their trips to the casino hotel entirely. The staff doggedly attributed the cancelations to the vandalism in the surrounding area.

"All ages, both sexes. The youngest is about a year. God, I can't imagine…"

"Do you have children?" Spencer asked, trying to make conversation while they killed time. All children registered at the hotel had been asked to congregate in a reception area just off of the day care center.

"Me? No… but of course…"

"The kids at the school," he said, automatically.

"Well, yeah. And the Maitland children, Angie and Artie. I nannied for them after their mother passed away. But that wasn't what I was going to say." He was quiet, giving her an opportunity to elaborate. "I suppose I haven't met anybody up to the task of _me_ , yet. Let alone…"

"The 'task' of you?" He raised an eyebrow as if to say, _really._

"Well… I can be… difficult. Not to mention the…" She shifted a bit in her seat. "The traveling."

"What about the Doctor?" _Or Daniel Pink_ , he thought, idly remember how the Doctor had stressed the importance of not mentioning future events.

"Oh, no! You know, I never quite knew what to think of the Doctor. At first I thought flirting with him could be fun. Then he scared me a little bit. No I know him _all too well_. Now he's family. But I suppose that happens when you jump into some one's time stream. What about you? Kids?" She gulped in a deep breath after blurting that all out with hardly any pauses.

"Sure, one day." He stood and started pacing the room. "My one friend – my boss – has a little boy, Jack. But it's hard for him, with the job. Harder than most, because Jack's mom died two years ago, so it's just the two of them, and we work insane hours. Then there's my godson, Henry. His dad's a cop and his mom…" he trailed off, realizing that he had been rambling. Right into J.J. "We work together," he said, trying to avoid more questions from Clara. But unlike Hotch and J.J., he hadn't been focused on concealing his emotions.

"Right…" she said, nodding her head slowly as if she had gotten the real meaning behind his quick dismissal of the subject.

"So, Maci Navoss," he said, quickly bringing up their main suspect.

"Girl with the eye patch, yeah."

"Some of the staff was uncomfortable when we brought up the growing number of absent kids over the past week, but she was too calm. Her reactions were too schooled to be genuine. And her answers came almost immediately following the question."

"What about the catering manager, Jennifer, and the other child minder, what's-is-name?"

"Marcine. They're definitely hiding something…"

Just then the door creaked open. It was Selah Vaus coming to tell them the children were assembled. "Before you head to the reception area, I'll need to see your credentials, Dr. Reid. Precautions." She inclined her head as if in apology for the inconvenience.

"Of course, Miss Vaus." He reached into his back pocket and pulled out the psychic paper, handing it over with as much of a careless air as he dared.

"Very good. Thank you, Doctor. Now… Miss Oswald?" She handed the paper back to Spencer and turned expectantly back to Clara.

"Oh. I'm so rubbish! My little girl," she shot a sharp look of warning to Spencer. _Go with it_. "Angie. She dumped it into the toilet this morning while I was feeding Artie. They're four and just over a year." She smiled brightly as she talked about her impromptu kids, then turned sheepishly to Spencer. "Sorry. My gosh, I couldn't bring myself to tell you. Been so muddle-headed lately. Are you going to write me up?"

"I should. We'll talk about it back at HQ with the Unit Chief. Meanwhile, Miss Vaus, I can vouch for Oswald. She's a good agent."

"Struggling with being a working mum, no doubt," the petite woman said with a sympathetic smile towards Clara. She led them back down the hall towards the daycare reception area, seemingly satisfied for the moment. "I'll go in and prepare them, get them settled," she said with a smile as she stationed them at the back of the large room.

"Are you going to tell the Unit Chief what a good _agent_ I am?" Clara asked with amusement as soon as Vaus was out of earshot. Reid nearly snorted.

"Seems to me you should be more worried about keeping your kids in line," he joked back.

"Yeah, they're thirteen and eleven, now. A lot worse than dunking things in the toilet happens at their house," she said, almost fondly. "You know, you're a good liar when it counts."

"I've known better… And I'm not so sure that's such a great compliment." Suddenly, he was beginning very much not to care about what Clara may or may not be picking up on. He was angry. And he'd tried to escape from that anger, but even now – in his dreams, ot the future, or whatever this place was – he kept running into his anger. And if this _was_ the future – twenty six hundred years into the future – there were still unsubs to fight. Still victims to save. And that made him even angrier.

He looked up from his thoughts and saw the eye patched day care worker walking towards them, heading for the crowd of kids behind them.

"Excuse me," Clara said, reaching out a hand to the other woman. "Maci, right?"

"Yes…" She answered, hesitantly turning back to them. She was noticeably less collected now than she had been during her previous interview.

"The… eye patch…?" Clara asked, putting on an embarrassed air for show. "Dpes it bother the kids? The young ones? Mine are terrified of pirates, and…"

"They get used to it," she said, interrupting Clara. "I'm needed to help with the children now."

"Sorry, do you mind?" Clara continued boldly. "What happened to you?"

 


	5. Welcome, Monsters

A/N: Hello all. So sorry for the long chapter delay. Those of you near me in Texas know that we have been battered by rain for the past month or more (depending on your area). So I now have a large hole in my ceiling and it has been raining inside as much as outside. It may be another week before we are able to get the house watertight again. So... posts may be sparse for a bit. But I'm getting things rounded out and I have a definite end in mind for this story. As well as plans for a follow-up one shot.

Please enjoy.  
Yve

* * *

"Fairytales do not tell children the dragons exist. Children already know the dragons exist. Fairytales tell children the dragons can be killed."

\- G. K. Chesterton

* * *

Oh, I didn't…" The sight took her breath away. The girl lifted the silver eye patch to reveal a lifeless, cloudy eye, half sunken into the socket beneath. "I'm so…" Clara began, not knowing what to say to smooth over the situation. She felt Spencer's hand on her wrist, warning her to be careful of what she said next. All she'd meant to do was to rattle the girl. See if she had a story for the patch as well as everything else she had explained so smoothly during her interview. Evidently, the eye patch wasn't just another lie.

"I think this might bother the kids more than the patch," Maci said coldly. "Now, I'd like to do my job, if that's alright."

"Please… go ahead," Spencer said to her, quietly.

"I'm sorry, I…"

"When we get up there," said Spencer, turning her around to face him. "Let me do the talking. Watch the kids. See if any of them look more interested than they typically should be during an assembly. Look for any signs of guilt or sadness. Nail biting, object fixation, other tells. Try to remember faces. Can you do that for me?"

"Yeah. Course I can."

They saw Selah Vaus motioning to them, so they began their journey to the small clearing at the front of the room, before the large crowd of children. A few steps on and Spencer's phone began buzzing in his trousers pocket.

"Hello?" he huffed in a hushed tone into the phone. A second later, he passed the device over to her. "He's excited. Asked for you. I can handle this. Talk to him and come find me when you're finished."

She took the phone and broke off from Spencer, heading back towards the back of the large room.

"Doctor?"

"I have bad news," The Doctor yelled back from the other end of the line. "The vandalism…. graffiti!"

"Yes? What does it say?" she asked, feeling her blood begin to rush. When the Doctor said the words 'bad news'… well…

There was a crackling on the other end of the line and Clara, tried to make out what he'd just said. She was _sure_ he'd said something.

"Doctor? What was that?"

"I said, look at your hands!"

Glancing down, Clara did as he asked. There were three straight lines drawn in pen along the edge of the hand holding the phone. But she had no recollection…

"Doctor?" she said, bringing the phone back to her ear and noticing, at the same time, the pen she was now gripping in the other hand.

"They're with you now, Clara! Listen carefully and write this down if you can. You may never remember it otherwise."

"Okay… Who's with me?" she asked, suddenly hearing the scared shakiness in her own voice.

"The Silents are there with you. You said you'd seen three in front of you, but there may be more. Start writing! The Silents are…"

She stood in the center of the small clear space at the front of the room, next to Spencer. The phone was snapped shut in her left hand and there were two more hash marks there. She was disorientated, her heart still racing so that she heard the rush of blood in her ears. He said she might not remember…

"Thank you all for your time. Remember to be careful as you move about the hotel, and be _sure_ to tell an adult if you see anything suspicious," Reid said, finishing his address to the kids. He turned to face her as the crowd began to dissipate. "What was that all about?"

"Sorry, what?"

"You were pacing and moving quickly around the back of the room like there was an emergency. And writing. What did he find?"

"I don't know," Clara answered, still dazed. She reached into her coat pocket for the small pad she'd used for note taking during interviews. "Silents," she said numbly as she looked at the new, frantically scribbled words.

"Silence?" he asked, loosening his necktie.

"That too," she said as she spotted that word as well in her hurried handwriting.

"Doctor Reid, Miss Oswald. If you wouldn't mind," Selah Vaus said timidly as she approached them from a small side door. "The Hotel and Casino GM has heard about all of this… _to do_ … and he'd like a word with you. If you don't mind."

"A quick word," Reid agreed, grudgingly, acting put out. "We have to meet with our agent at one of the vandalized locations. He's turned up some evidence." Clara suspected he was loath to continue spreading the lie that they were Shadow Proclamation agents.

"Of course. I know how important time must be to you all," Selah answered. "We'll have you on your way quick as can be. This way please."

As they began to follow the small woman down the hallway, Clara passed the notebook to her partner. She'd skimmed it all and added a small annotation at the end, in case he was having trouble following the information. It said:

_Silents will kill you. The others can stop your heart or worse. No turning back now, Dr. Reid._

In the space of mere seconds he had read the few pages of notes, slipping the little book into his back pocket. He turned to look at Clara and caught her eyes with his. He understood.

As they continued down the darkened hallway, Spencer began moving a bit faster, taking longer strides. For a few steps Clara attempted to pick up her pace as well, moving her short legs as far and as quickly as she could. Then she realized… Reid was placing himself in the 'front line', between her and the most likely direction of danger.

It reminded her of the Doctor.

"Just in here," Selah said, pointing to a large set of double doors.

The next moment threw her back into the disjointed feeling of distorted reality that she had experienced earlier.

Clara now stood in a large, dimly lit industrial space. Her hands were slapped up against a thick metal door, and she could hear children crying in the vast space behind her.

"What happened?" she half shouted, turning around, trying to locate Spencer.

"I don't know," she heard him croak from a shadowed corner. He was tied tightly to a metal chair that had been tipped over on its side hard enough to dent the metal, let alone what it had done to his shoulder.

She ran back across the room, taking a moment to locate the source of the crying on her way. The children were all huddled together in another corner, untied like her, some of the older ones hushing the babies. Without a proper chance to count them, all she could say was that she was _pretty sure_ that they were all accounted for.

She reached Spencer and began trying to leverage the chair back to a sitting position.

He was bleeding from his mouth and nose, but his eyes kept fluttering open.

"Come on, Spence. Stay awake. The Doctor's not here, so I need your brilliant, clever mind. Yeah? Keep your eyes open!" she encouraged.

* * *

"You _really_ have no idea what kind of trouble you're about to be in!" Spencer heard Clara shout with bravado. Only a second ago they had been walking down a long hallway towards the GM's office. Now… He felt as though he'd been hit in the face with a two by four. His eyes were squeezed shut against the pain, and his hands were restrained behind his back.

"You haven't met my friend yet," Clara continued. "And he is very protective – _ahh_!" There was a short, sharp cry from her, causing him to force his eyes open.

Across the room, near a large, thick metal door, Clara stood, holding her forehead. Selah Vaus stood facing her, holding a billy club. He could see another form standing in the shadowy hallway through the open door, but he couldn't quite make them out.

"Very protective of his traveling companions. Yes, we know. That is why you, Miss Oswald, and you, Dr. Reid, are here. Providing us with an unavoidable reason for the Doctor to confront us – the monsters in the shadows."

As the woman spoke to Clara, Spencer watched another one of those… things – tall, distorted, head too big for its body, flesh a sick grey color… and now that he saw it, he could swear he'd seen it before – approach Clara from behind. It raised its taloned hand slowly towards her and the lights began to flicker. Violently.

"What… what is that?" Clara said as she dropped her hand from over her eye and turned slowly around. "My god, it's you lot," she said in a combination of fear and disbelief. As she stood facing the monster, currents of electricity began to crackle in the air around its hand. "Isn't live bait _so_ much better than fried crisp shards of flesh?" she said, bravely in a quiet voice.

Spencer could see the current beginning to arc toward her, and as brave a face as she was wearing, he wasn't sure her comment would be enough to protect her. So he lunged.

Hearing the movement, the monster – the Silent, he gathered from what Clara had written about them – channeled his energy in a new direction. The arc of electricity hit him, knocking him off his path, sending both Spencer and the chair he was strapped to, crashing to the floor.

As he fell, he heard Clara cry out in protest, and Selah yell, "That's enough!"

By now he was struggling to keep his eyes open. Focusing on his breathing and his heart rate were the first coherent things he could think of. His eyes began to close again of their own volition, and in the darkness he was able to hear the heavy metal door slam shut, the sound of small hands pounding against it, as Clara screamed out a strangled cry of frustration… anger… fear…

"What happened?" she yelled, suddenly.

"I don't know," he answered back through gritted teeth. All he seemed to be able to remember was being tied to the chair, listening to Selah rant about using them as bait, and hitting Clara over the eye with a club. Then he was on the hard concrete, still tied up and in excruciating pain. His shoulder was possibly dislocated and he'd been knocked in the face by something with great force, but what was most concerning was the pain radiating through his chest. It was like he had been electrocuted.

He could hear footsteps running toward him, hesitating once, halfway there. In the relative silence of the room he could hear a child crying and drawing in ragged, panicked breaths. Then he felt her trying to maneuver his chair back upright.

Spencer forced his eyes open to take in their surroundings again.

"Come on, Spence. Stay awake. The Doctor's not here, so I need your brilliant, clever mind. Yeah? Keep your eyes open!"

 _Spence._ "J.J.'s the only person in the world who calls me Spence," he mumbled through clenched teeth.

"Then stay awake for J.J.," Clara said after a short pause. She had no idea who that was but she must have figured they were important to him. He shuddered at the flood of mixed emotions and decided to focus on something else.

"You're bleeding," he said, regaining more control of his thoughts and speech.

"No, my dear. 'Fraid that's you."

"Your eye… over your eye." She reached her hand up and pulled it back with blood coating her fingers.

"It's not that bad," she said. "But I'm not sure I can get you sitting again without your help. You feel strong enough?"

He heard another sob from his right and any thoughts of his situation abruptly left him.

"Check on the kids!" he managed to croak, making his chest throb a little more.

"We're fine, mister."

It sounded like a pre-pubescent boy, but it could have easily had been a girl. "Lola?" he guessed. The oldest of the missing kids, she was Pyroxian – extremely pale blonde with blood red eyes. She would be fourteen.

"Yes. We haven't been hurt, mister. The babies are just a little scared, is all," she said determinedly in a scared voice herself.

"How many of you are there?" he asked, still trying to catch his breath as Clara tried to make progress with the restraints at his wrists and ankles.

"There's ten kids, and me…" He smiled at her description – she'd assumed the role of adult and caretaker. Good for her. "And now there's… Miss Maci."

"Maci?!" Clara exclaimed.

"Yes, she's still sleeping. They took her eye patch and she's scared a couple of the babies… so I turned her to face the wall."

"How long has she been sleeping, Lola?" Spencer asked, running back over the interview with the day care worker in his mind. She was too confident, quick to answer random questions, protective body language, she took her job very seriously. He saw deception when he studied her face. But now… he was beginning to wonder if it wasn't like the deception you would see when you questioned an undercover officer. Nothing would add up because they couldn't afford to blow their cover.

"She was sleeping when they brought her here. A few minutes before they brought you."

"Lola," Clara spoke up. "Can you see the Silents? The… the monsters? Do you know what they look like?"

It was a good question. He was impressed.

"No. We can't remember them, but we know they're there."

As the girl spoke, there was a groaning from the opposite corner of the room.

"It's Maci," Clara whispered to him.

"Go to her. I think she's been trying to help…" he glanced at Clara long enough to see the determined set of her jaw as she nodded, just once. She was ready to put her trust in him. It made him a little queasy. Or maybe that was an after effect of the electrocution. "My tie," he said, suddenly remembering that she was without an eye patch. "Take my tie."

Clara tugged the tie from around his neck and bundled it into her blazer pocket. "I'll look for something sharp. Those are, like, the plastic zip cuffs," she said, motioning to his restraints. "Don't worry. The Doctor will save us." She made to stand up but he whispered a frantic _wait_ to keep her close a little longer.

"Selah said we were bait. That's the last thing I remember before lying on the floor. We're bait for the Doctor…"

"What else is new?" Clara said, shaking her head wearily. She stood and left him to go check on Maci.

The last time he'd been tied to a chair like this… knocked over onto the hard, dirty ground… Tobias…

* * *

"Maci?" Clara spoke softly as she approached the heap of the other woman on the concrete floor, moaning quietly. "Maci, it's Clara."

"Why did you come here?" the huddled woman asked weakly. Still there was a sense of reprimand in her tone.

"For the gambling," she answered with a grunt as she leaned down to help Maci into a sitting position. "Why else come to a casino planet?"

"If you came for the casino, then what are you doing here?" There was that accusing tone again. As if Clara had personally and willfully sabotaged some sort of secret operation. _Operation Hide and Seek_ , or something ridiculous like that.

"I don't know why you think you're in a position to judge," Clara said, passing Maci the tie and motioning to her eye. "You're locked away in the same dungeon. Whatever plan you had hasn't worked out either."

"So you _did_ have a plan?" She was wrapping the fabric round her head like some sort of a crooked headband, awkwardly trying to tie the ends blindly behind her.

"Here, let me." Clara began rewrapping the tie so that it sat lower over the girl's poor, ruined eye, still wondering what had caused the injury. Now wasn't the time, though. "Just thought it was weird, you know… so few people here on such a special weekend. Thought we might try to find out why…"

"By impersonating Shadow Proclamation agents?"

"How do you know we're not…"

"They dress differently, for one," Maci interrupted, answering Clara before she'd finished asking the question. "You two dress like real people. Two… no Judoon. Those thugs would be crawling all over this place if they thought that something was going on in defiance of the Shadow Proclamation. No, you're not professionals."

"Not like you?" Clara asked curtly. She was getting tired of this pissing contest – who was the better undercover agent, who'd achieved more before the ax came down on the whole of Operation Hide and Seek. "You infiltrated the day care system at the hotel, I assume in order to keep an eye on the kids, though they kept disappearing. And you've been here since the beginning of it all," she said, employing her _you-bloody-well-didn't-finish-the-assigned-reading-and-we-both-know-it_ voice. "What do you know about what's going on that I don't?"

"I know about the Silents," she whispered harshly, trying not to upset the children any more than they already were.

"So do we. How do I know you're not working for them? The eye patch, that was an eye-drive, wasn't it?" Clara knew better than that. If she had been working for the Silents, she had certainly now been discovered as a double agent… or whatever she may be, because they'd taken her eye-drive and given her a nasty knock on the head, at least. She thought about the cut above her own eye and suppressed a grimace as she felt it throb naggingly.

"You know better than that," Maci bit back, mirroring Clara's own thoughts. "… It was an eye-drive. I… appeared to work for them. Sometimes the Church sends out a human counterpart to help the Silents position themselves for their task. It wasn't necessary this go-round, but I showed up with an eye-drive anyway, and… well… 'act as if', you know?"

"That simple?"

"Oh, it's never simple. First we had to locate the eye-drive. Then we needed to determine where the Silents would strike. And of course, my cover identity…"

" _We_?" Clara interrupted. "There's more of you out there?"

"Don't laugh," Maci whispered seriously. "We're called the Cacophony Movement. There are four other members operating simultaneous missions to surveil, and sabotage, if possible, the Silents."

As Clara tried to wrap her mind around the thought of an anti-Silence movement operating in the universe, seemingly unknown to the Doctor, there was a commotion coming from the corner opposite, where the kids were huddled.

"Miss Maci," Lola called out. "I can't get Asher to settle."

"Here we go," she said, pulling the squalling toddler into her arms. "There we are, now. What's wrong with your brother, Anise?" Maci asked as a small girl with masses of blond curls fit to topple her walked timidly up to the pair.

"He's sad," she said quietly, in contrast with her brother's lung-shattering wails.

"I know it's scary, but you and he – and we all – have to be very brave now, Anise." She knelt before the little elfin girl – probably only four or five years old – with her baby brother tearing at her shirt and hair, dripping tears and snot as he cried hard into her shoulder. And she was calm and patient, and unthreatening. No wonder she'd been chosen for the child minder operation.

"He's not scared," Anise answered her, matter-of-fact-ly. "He's sad."

"Well, why do you say that, Anise?" Clara asked this time, kneeling down to join Maci at the children's level. "You can call me Miss Clara, and I'm here to help Miss Maci figure out how to get us out of here," she said as Anise fixed her with a skeptical stare.

"She's nice," Maci said, nodding as she bounced Asher a bit, quieting him.

"He's sad because Da… He forgot all about us," the little girl announced with a crack to her small voice.

"No, sweetheart. I'm sure…" she began before Maci shook her head and pointed to her eye. Anise shook her head as Clara hesitated to finish her sentence.

"Come here," Clara said, spreading her arms wide, inviting the little girl to snuggle close to her. "Listen to me… sometimes things happen that might be scary or sad, but we've got to be really brave and strong to overcome them. And it's okay to be sad. Feeling sad is a thing that happens so that when you're feeling happy again – and trust me, you will be happy again – you can understand how amazing that is. It's the sad moments in our lives that make the happy ones more precious." She hoped the explanation was simple enough for the girl to understand, or, at the very least, that she had cheered her with the cuddle while delivering it.

"I… think I see," said the girl, nodding her head against Clara's shoulder.

"So… Explain something to me. I think I get it, but…" She trailed off, letting Maci infer the meaning of her question.

"The Silents use the post hypnotic suggestion. Once they've located the children that they want… mums, dads, hotel administrators… It's like they never existed in the first place."

"Yeah, but they're still registered in the computers…" Clara said. There was a niggling feeling of doubt. Something was off about that. Make everyone forget, but leave the data in the system…? It seemed sloppy. "That's how we discovered they were missing…"

"It was a trap," Maci said softly. Little Asher had just about cried himself out for the moment. "For someone else. Someone that the Silents are trying to destroy." Clara knew the next words out of Maci's mouth before she spoke them. "Have you ever heard of a man called The Doctor?"

 


	6. Boy With A Coin

 

 

 

A/N: So sorry for the super long chap, guys, but that's just how it crumbled this time. Good news is that I finished the storry tonight and the remaining chapters just need a little polishing before I get them out to you. So...  
Enjoy!

* * *

"I'm being extremely clever up here and there's no one to stand around looking impressed! What's the point in having you all?"  
\- The Doctor

* * *

_No. I don't want anymore. Please. Please, no._

"Please, no," Spencer mumbled, waking himself up from the nightmare memory that sometimes worked its way into his unconscious moments. This time, at least, he understood the trigger. He was still on the hard concrete floor, tied to the metal chair, his entire body aching from the way his muscles had seized with the current of electricity that had sped through him.

He heard footsteps and snapped his eyes open to determine who was approaching.

"What was that?" Clara asked as she walked up to him with a jagged metal shard in one hand, and a little girls hand in her other.

"Nothing. Dreaming."

"I have bad dreams some days," the little girl said.

"You do?" he asked, raising an eyebrow at Clara in question.

"Yes. You have to be really brave," she announced.

"Anise," Clara addressed her small counterpart. "I need both hands now. Why don't you sit over there by Spencer's head… keep him company," she suggested.

The little girl leveled her bright green eyes at him and sat down softly on the concrete a few inches from where his head rested. She pulled her skirts straight underneath her and started running her fingers through his hair.

"I bet you're really brave," he said as she brushed the sweat soaked strands off of his forehead. "Can you tell me what your bad dreams are about?" Anise pulled her hand back and held both of them in tight fists close to her chest as she sighed heavily.

"No one will believe me," she said in a defeated, little voice.

"But see, I know this trick," he said softly, like he was giving away an important secret. "That tells me if someone is telling me the truth, or just a story. All I have to do is watch their face. So… I already know that what you have to say is the truth. Can you trust that I believe you?" As he asked his question, he felt the restraint on his left ankle give.

"Just twice more," Clara announced from behind him.

"They come to the classroom sometimes. And they always take one of us. Every time."

"Anise," he said calmly, licking his dry lips, realizing that they had finally gotten a real lead. "Was it a bad dream, or did this really happen?"

"Miss Vaus said it was a dream."

"Anise, can you do me a favor?" The little girl nodded eagerly, pleased to be able to help. "Can you close your eyes and let me ask you some questions?"

"Uhh…" She said, scooting back on her heels in hesitation.

"I know that you can do it, Anise. You're really brave, remember? And Miss Clara and I will be right here the whole time."

Without another word, she nodded her head of massive blond curls as she closed her eyes.

"Okay. The first time they came to your classroom, what were you doing?"

"Eating a cookie."

"And what did it taste like? Was it warm?" He hadn't ever conducted a cognitive interview on someone so young before. That had been Emily and Hotch's forte.

"Yes, it was warm… and sweet. Miss Jen-fer always brings good snacks," she announced, referring to the catering manager.

"What did it sound like in the room that day?"

"Loud. Always loud in the room."

"And when did you first notice them in the room?"

"Mira started crying," she said, her voice becoming an even smaller whisper.

Spencer called Mirabelle Brook up to the front of his mind. Eight years old. Bright. Single mother. No siblings. Dark skin, long, bright copper colored hair. She was part human, part Tandonian.

"What made Mira cry, Anise?" He felt a hard tug on his right leg and his second restraint was broken. Feeling began making it's way back into his feet with painful determination.

"They were staring at her."

"Were they just staring?" he asked, more excitedly than he meant to. "Were they doing anything else?"

"They were chanting," she whispered so quietly that he almost couldn't hear her. "I want to stop now!" she shouted, standing up and running behind him to cling to Clara as she worked on the final restraint holding his hands to the back of the metal chair.

"That's okay, Anise. You did great. You helped me out so much."

"The plastic's dulling the metal," Clara said frustratedly. "Maybe twist your hands a bit. I'm more than halfway through…"

He started torqueing his wrists in opposite directions as Clara continued to work on the zip-cuffs with her makeshift knife. There was a warm trickle of liquid making it's way down his left arm, but he kept twisting.

"You're bleeding, but we've almost got it. Can you go on?" she asked, even as he continued the motion with his wrists.

There was a snapping noise and he fell forward onto his shoulder and chest as his hands were freed from the final restraint.

"Can you sit up?" she asked, panicked concern lacing her voice.

"I'm fine," he said, pushing away from the chair and rolling onto his back. He just needed to let his muscles rest from the constrained position they had been forced into for the last few hours. Rubbing his wrists he propped himself up on his elbows in order to survey the room. The group of kids – ten, plus the one shadow at Clara's side – were calmer now. Maci was with them, wearing his tie, like some kind of rock star headband, over her eye.

"She was talking about the Whisper Men," Clara said, softly, stroking the blonde tangles back from the little girl's face.

"You took notes on the Silents… but nothing on the Whisper Men except their name."

"That's because I know them. First hand experience." She sounded… well, unhappy was putting it mildly.

"What do they say?" he asked, pushing himself fully up and running a hand through his hair again. "Or chant?"

Clara pulled a handkerchief from her blazer pocket and licked the tip of it before going after the dried blood on Spencer's face. He resigned himself to the treatment without much thought, too focused on learning about this new threat of _the Whisper Men_.

"'This man must fall as all men must

The fate of all is always dust'," Clara said, in a tired voice, her eyes half closed in a mood of defeat. "I thought we had beaten them, that there was no cause to worry about them anymore… but I suppose that was then, far off in the future. They're still here to contend with now, apparently." He was about to ask her what had happened when they heard another voice join in the conversation.

"' _Do you hear the Whisper Men? The Whisper Men are near. If you hear the Whisper Men, then turn away your ear. Do not hear the Whisper men, whatever else you do. For once you've heard the Whisper Men, they'll stop and look at you.'"_

Clara leapt to her feet, nearly knocking Anise over in the process, and ran straight into the arms of The Doctor.

"What took you so long?" she shouted, pulling back from his hug long enough to punch him in the arm.

"Ow! Hello, no TARDIS, remember?" he shouted back in defense. "Com'ere." He pulled her face up by the chin so that he could get a good look at the cut over her eye. "Oh, what have they done… To bothof you?" he said, suddenly seeing Spencer's bloodied face and shaking hands.

"Gotten us out of the way, for one thing," Spencer said, struggling to push up off of the floor. The Doctor sprinted over and offered him a hand up.

"Well, no concussion, at least," he said, peering into Spencer's eyes, both hands pressed to the sides of his face.

"You can tell that from looking at me?" he asked, skeptically.

"No. Not at all. Just being positive. No use being negative at this point." He removed his hands from Spencer's face and squeezed his shoulder gently, asking in a more hushed voice, "How are you really doing?" Spencer could only meet his eyes silently, not able to express the aching fear that had clutched him while he'd been tied to the chair, unable to do anything but lay there and dream of Tobias Henkel. "I am so sorry, Spencer. From the bottom of my hearts. I never meant… well…"

He nodded his acceptance of the man's apology… it was part of the job. Your teammates couldn't be expected to prevent the unavoidable. Sometimes… that's just how it was.

He closed his eyes against the memory of a hospital waiting room, trying to focus instead on learning about the plan that the Doctor had surely come up with to solve the tangled case.

"Oh-kay," the man said turning around and clapping his hands together. "Kids. Got the kids. That's good. All eleven. Good number, if I do say so myself. And the child minder," he said, shifting his attention to Maci where she stood, herding the children into a tight group. "Hello. I'm the Doctor. You must be Maci."

"I… _you're_ the Doctor?"

"That's right, Maci. Do you know what your kids have been doing, Maci? Vandalism. All over the planet of Acreie 67. And not just anyvandalism. Graffiti! Naughty, cleaverboys and girls. Can I ask, who graffitied the poem?" He steepled his hands and turned his flashing eyes on the kids.

You could hear a pin drop. And it was a big room.

"Oi, you lot don't think I'll be getting you into trouble for telling me it was you, do you?" The silence continued as he took another few steps closer to the little group. "Now, that's just insulting. I used to send messages back and forth to the Missus by way of graffiti!"

"How could you message your wife by graffiti?" asked a boy who looked to be close to Lola in age. Probably Ellery Salix. He spoke with something like a thick South African accent, though Spencer was sure it's origins far outpaced what he was familiar with.

"Ah, well… you use anything to get the message across when you miss a girl. Yeah? Time-travelers. You know how it is. Once, my wife defaced an entire mountainside outside the New Dunsmere Prime natural caverns, just to remind me about tea later." They continued to stare blankly at him.

But Spencer could see – and evidently he wasn't the only one – the nervous way Lola fussed with one of the babies' shoelaces as she held him; Harrison, a ten-year-old from New New York pulled nervously at his shirtsleeves; and while the other children all stared at this strange man talking about time travel and defacing natural landmarks, only one of them was staring him hard in the eyes.

"Right… Okay. All of you can run off back to your… eh, corner – so sorry 'bout that, by the way; working on it – and sing songs, tell stories, etcetera…" his voice trailed off as they began, one by one, to filter back a few feet and resume their seats on the cold, concrete floor. "Except for you, you, and you," he said, quickly pointing out the three oldest children in the group.

Lola started breathing rapidly as they all approached the four adults – Maci still held a little boy, asleep on her hip and Anise was glued to Clara's side.

The Doctor knelt in front of the little trio, and reached out to smooth a hand over Lola's white blonde hair, calming the ragged fear in her eyes. "Hey… none of that," he said, quietly with a comforting smile on his face. "I have it on very good authority that I am nothinglike a mature, responsible grown up."

"I've never seen a worse Peter Pan complex," Clara muttered in Spencer's ear. It made him jump. He'd had no idea she was so close.

"Someone's gotta keep you lot safe from the Captain Hook's of the universe," he argued back without turning around. "But, truly. I needed you to know how brave that was to do. How truly, greatlybrave that was. All of you," he said, turning from one young face to the next. "Very, very brave. I thank you."

"We didn't know what to do," Lola said, looking down at the Doctor where he knelt. "But we had to do something. And then… they came for us…"

"But we did it, 'casuse Ellery said," Harrison began rattling on in explanation. "That grown ups always pay attention to you when your being bad."

"Smart, Ellery," the Doctor nodded in sad approval.

"Only time mum and dad bat an eyelash at me," the boy explained.

Some things never change, Spencer thought. There were good parents, bad parents, and indifferent parents raising kids all over the universe.

"So… you believe them now?" Hotch asked as his apparition appeared behind the three kids.

_I don't know. Maybe,_ he thought to himself, rather than answer out loud.

"You trust him, but you have reason to be wary. Sometimes your gut will give you a truer view of the subject than all of your analytics. Go with your gut, Reid. And let go of your mistrust."

You, he thought. _You lied to me. You, and J.J,. and Emily_.

"I did," Hotch said without apology. "And I had a legitimate reason. And as your friend, I'm deeply sorry for what that broken trust has done to you. But as your boss, and Unit Chief of this team, I couldn't afford myself the luxury of worrying about that."

I know, he thought with a single nod as the apparition faded away.

"Clever boy," the Doctor was saying to Ellery as Spencer brought his focus back to the issue at hand. "But where did you learn the poem from?"

"Dunno," said Ellery. "Just around."

"Yeah, we heard it around. Not sure where," Lola agreed as Harrison nodded emphatically.

"What poem?" Maci asked, swaying back and forth as the toddler on her hip began to stir.

"'Do you hear the Whisper Men'," the Doctor began, repeating the words he had spoken just after he appeared in the room.

"Selah. She taught it to them. Then the Silents would come and…"

"Wipe all memory of where they'd heard it," he finished for her. "But they left the words themselves as well as the images of the Whisper Men taking the other children."

"They wanted the kids scared," Clara said in disbelief. "What is the point of that?"

"So that they would leave the graffiti," Spencer supplied, piecing all the moves together on his mental chessboard. "A message to entice the Doctor. And the kids… they were bait. And now we're here. We're bait. We were relatively safe until…"

"Until I arrived," The Doctor finished.

* * *

"How _did_ you get in here?" Clara asked him. "I don't see the TARDIS."

"What have I told you, Clara? Never take the TARDIS into battle," he scolded. What he was actually avoiding saying was that the TARDIS was still in impound. He'd've liked nothing better than to materialize in the darkened sub-basement, sweeping them all into the bigger-on-the-inside console room and taking them out of harms way. But even if it had been an option, he knew the day would never end so simply. "It took a bit of a minor miracle to sneak in without her, but – being a Time Lord – I'm well acquainted with performing miracles."

"You still have the vortex manipulator from the Black Archive, don't you?" Clara asked flatly, in that way she had when she could see right through him.

"I _hate_ travel by vortex manipulator!" he said by way of confirming her suspicions. "You can take that to mean I must be fond of you to resort to… _this_." He held out and shook his wrist, with the device attached, to illustrate his displeasure. "But the bright side is, they probably haven't detected my slipping into this room yet. Makes a smaller ripple in the temporal field than a TARDIS punching through the Time Vortex," he said with a smile.

"Good to hope we have that as an advantage," Clara said, still holding a frown on her face in spite of all of the good news. He decided to pointedly ignore her comment and instead turned to the little girl clutching at Clara's jeans.

"Hello," he said, kneeling again to reach the child's eye level. (Today was a bit of a workout for his old knees.) "What's your name?"

"Anise," she said in a small, brave voice. He could see the strength in her, and oh, what a stand-up woman she would become. Those untamable blonde curls reminded him a bit of his wife… Maybe he was projecting. But she would be brilliant, nonetheless, little Anise.

"Anise. That is a beautiful name. Have you met Spencer? The tall, funny looking bloke in the vest, over there?" She nodded with a tiny exhale of breath that he took to be a nervous giggle. "Why don't you go and sit with him. He's sad and a bit of company could do him some good."

As he glanced up at Spencer he was fixed with a scowl that would curdle custard. Reaching into his bigger-on-the-inside pocket, he pulled out a Darulean Noble – about the size of an American Quarter – and tossed it to the scowling FBI agent.

"He doesn't look sad, he looks angry," Anise declared.

"I know. But sometimes _sad_ and _angry_ get mixed up on our faces. Sometimes for a reason. Sometimes it makes us feel safe from the thing that made us sad in the first place."

The little girl nodded, and, before running off to join Dr. Reid, she did the strangest thing – she reached up and hugged him round the neck.

"Oh. Still the charming guy, runnin' round, huggin' girls who're too young for you," Clara said with a smirk as she was released from the little girl's grasp. He pulled her a few paces back from the others and began speaking lowly, so that only she would be privy.

"Clara, this is not a good thing, not a good thing at all." It was so much worse than _not-a-good-thing_.

"Yeah, I get that." She spread her arms to encompass the entire group of captives. "Kidnapped, locked in a dungeon. Smashed in the face. All rather _not good_ things."

"No Clara. That doesn't matter." She pursed her lips at that, nostrils flared, probably holding back a brilliantly dirty curse on behalf of the children in the room. "I'm sorry, but it really _doesn't_ matter on the scale of not-good. It is…" he had to close his eyes to let the next three words slip like traitors out of his mouth. "So. Much. Worse."

"Okay."

He opened his eyes and looked down at his companion. His impossible girl. His friend. She was standing there, a steady look on her face, bracing for the bad news. But there was no annoyed or contemptuous frown this time. Only trust.

"Tell me then. How's it worse?"

"The Silents. I've fought them before. And their goal was my death…" Okay. That didn't surprise her. Moving on. "But then I… ' _died_ '… more or less, and they moved on. Back to the Papal Mainframe, I suppose." Okay. She was still focused. No questions about the dying, then. Moving on, again. "And the Whisper Men – really, The Great Intelligence. You know what _they_ want. But that's in the future for them or they couldn't possibly be here. No… this happens before… eh, before _Trenzalore_."

"Doctor, I know all of this." She was certainly expecting something more. And it was that last bit that he didn't want to admit to her. Saying it made it real.

But not saying it didn't un-make it.

"The Silents are doable… I could use… yes, _that might work_ ," he thought out loud, his mind searching for a tidy way out, even as he was supposed to be explaining the unsolvable problem.

"Okay, I expect you'll explain that bit as it's happening. Not my favorite way to make a plan. What about the Whisper Men, though?"

"I can't…" he said, his throat going dry. He had failed her before, and in so many different lifetimes. And here was a chance to make sure that it never happened. But he couldn't. And he couldn't tell her either, that would only be cruel.

He glanced over at Spencer, doing magic tricks for Anise with the coin he'd been tossed.

"I can't move more than one of you at a time without the TARDIS," he said. It wasn't what he had been meant to say, but it bought him some time before it needed saying.

"And even if you could get that door opened with the sonic, there's no way we smuggle fifteen people out of this basement without getting caught." She had latched on to his new train of thought. Good on her. Worry about that for a while, instead of other things.

"Yes. That's a problem…" He cast his eyes about the large basement room looking for anything that might be useful.

"Junk. Junk. Basements – all across the universe – are always full of old _junk_. It's like… an intergalactic _requisite_."

"What kind of junk are you looking for?" Clara asked, trying desperately to follow his train of thought. It really wasn't fair on her.

"I dunno. Stuff."

"Stuff?"

" _Yes_ ," he whined, defensively. She was always critical, this one. But that was part of what made her so clever. "Stuff."

"Doctor?" He didn't like the tone. That tone meant that she was about to point out the obvious. "Do you actually _have_ a plan?"

"Well, _yeah_ ," he said in his best impersonation of a twelve-year-old.

_…_ _when one is in love with an ageless god who insists on the face of a twelve-year-old…_

He scowled at his wife's words ringing in his head. It had been a bad day that day… in Manhattan. He shouldn't have shouted. He regretted it now, in the face of what they'd lost.

_Sentimental idiot_ … he heard her voice again. Then, lately realized that Clara had been saying something.

"Hmm? What was that?"

"I said, what sort of a plan _is it_?" Clara repeated.

"The sort of plan I'm about to come up with," he answered with a humorless smile. He thought she might say something more by way of a scolding, but she only stepped back with a sigh as he spun round in place slowly, surveying the room. "There, that old chair. Could be drug out to the middle. And those old crates – I love old crates. Never know what you'll find in old crates – could do with a couple of those. _Oh-kay_ … those pipes should come in handy. And, is that old, metal fencing? Lovely."

With the help of Spencer, Maci, and the older children, he and Clara organized the discarded debris from the hotel's recent renovation into a tidy pile at the center of the room.

"Okay, now what?" Clara asked, wiping the back of her hand across her forehead.

He couldn't resist the urge. Taking her head in both of his hands he leaned forward and placed a kiss of reward above her brow. Leaning back and licking the moisture off of his lips, he stuck his tongue out and made a noise of displeasure at the taste.

She stuck her tongue out at him, mockingly. In truth he was glad for the salty, human taste on his tongue. It meant what he had been dreaming about since Trenzalore was true. He had saved her. She was here. And she was so, so alive.

She raised her brows at him, urging an answer to her earlier question.

"Now, you go stand over there, while I talk to Spencer," he instructed. She scowled at him.

"Are you trying to keep something from me?"

"No," he lied. _Rule #1_. "I need you to go calm the natives. They're getting restless. I've got some technical figures I need to discuss with the young doctor and I thought you might be bored. If you'd rather stay…"

"Nope. No," she shook her head lightly and took two steps backwards, away from the Doctor and toward the restless group of children.

He caught Spencer's eye with a wave of his hand, calling the man over to him. The poor boy was having trouble shaking Anise's hold on his ankles.

"I'll come back," Spencer promised the child.

"If you two go plotting, I _will_ have it out of ya," Clara smirked before fully turning and walking away from them.

"She can be a little…"

"Scary," The Doctor interrupted.

"Forceful," Spencer finished with raised eyebrows.

"Yeah, well… yeah." He tore his eyes away from Clara and turned to the young man eagerly awaiting marching orders. He aloud himself a moment (well, millisecond, more like) to contemplate the differences between this Spencer and the one he had known in that man's future. He wasn't too far back, in truth. Though, the man had mellowed, settled back into the routine of work and his work-family (new and old members alike), he still had his moments of doubt about his resolve. That old _need to be other than where he was_ that the Doctor was so familiar with, himself. Some things were very addicting indeed. He refused to think about how many lives he'd caused harm due to his very real addiction of always running, always seeking, always finding trouble. He didn't mean for it to happen, he really didn't… He'd tried it on his own for a bit, as well, tucking himself up in a cloud, away from the rest of the world. That hadn't worked either. So he chose to forget. It felt less guilty than saying he'd think about that later.

_The man who forgets…_

That hadn't been his wife… but the voice was familiar. He just couldn't quite place having heard it before.

Spencer began tapping his trainers against the concrete, bringing the Doctor back to the present moment.

"I'm going to need your help…" he said.

Ten minutes later, instructions delivered to Spencer, he called Clara back to make the pair a trio once more.

"Okay," he said excitedly, wearing his patented smile-that-was-too-eager-for-the-situation. "I've given Spencer the exact coordinates. When I signal you with the sonic," he pulled it out and deployed the sensors and stabilizers together. "You'll hear this loud _wheee-eee-eee_ noise coming from the console, and then it's safe to fly her back."

"What? Doctor…" frustration was quickly coloring Clara's cheeks. She was probably mad that… "I thought the TARDIS was still in impound! With the boot?" she asked, interrupting his train of thought.

"Yes," he said patiently, like trying to answer a confused, angry child. "That's why you need the Vortex Manipulator. Well… apart from to get you there in the first place. It's really all very simple," he said. "I've told Spencer only once and he's remembered it all. _And_ coordinates!" He took a step back as the small brunette took a threatening step forward.

"I'll explain it once we get there," Spencer said, taking Clara by the arm. "He's got his hands full… Eleven kids under the aged of fifteen, _and_ he's got to build a Faraday cage." Taking a step back, The Doctor watched the young man pull Clara close and tap out the code onto the device. They disappeared before Clara had a chance to say anything in protest.

He stared at the spot where they'd been for a longer time than he could afford to waste. The older boy from the little group of vandals – Ellery – appeared at his elbow some seconds later.

"You gonna make a Faraday cage?" he asked.

"Yeah."

"And that will save us?"

"Just might do, Ellery."

"And that's what you do? Go around savin' people?"

"Beats diggin' a hole."

The boy chuckled, bringing a small, genuine smile to the Doctor's face.

"Oi! You lot of kids, there," he called the other children to attention. "You've ever heard of a teepee? Big houses made from animal's skins and great big poles at the center?"

The kids all stared at him without recognition. He blamed the education system…48th century schools.

"Right. We've got poles. We haven't got animal skins but this metal fencing should work very nicely. Now! Who wants to make a giant metal teepee?!"

 


	7. Revelations

"Through crimson stars and silent stars and tumbling nebulas like oceans set on fire, through empires of glass and civilizations of pure thought, and a whole, terrible, wonderful universe of impossibilities. You see these eyes? They're old eyes… and one thing I can tell you: monsters are real."  
\- The Doctor

* * *

"Oi! What the _bloody_ -hell was that all about?!" Clara shouted as they materialized inside the TARDIS control room. She had just enough presence of mind to push Spencer back before she rushed to the platform rail and emptied her stomach over the side. _Vortex Manipulator_ , she thought, forgiving the Doctor for every time he'd complained about traveling that way in the past. He was completely, totally right.

 

And he was lying to her.

She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand as she heard the TARDIS whir angrily in protest to the sick now coating her lower deck. "Shut up. Old cow," she muttered under her breath. There was another, more excited whir at that and Clara stuck her tongue out in response.

"He said the two of you didn't get along…" she heard from over her shoulder. Turning round, she found Spencer bracing against the console, looking down at the metal grating of the floor to where the main control wiring harnesses were housed below them.

"Did he?" she asked, quirking an eyebrow at that. "What else did he tell you?"

"That floor panel – where you threw up!" he gasped excitedly. "It just… melted away. Dissolved."

"Yeah," Clara nodded.

"Now it's back! Clean…"

"Yeah, she does that," she said, unsurprised.

"He wanted you out of the way," Spencer said, straightening, his face still pale from the effects of uncontained travel through the Vortex.

"Wow. That wasn't nearly as difficult to get out of you as I'd thought it might be."

"He asked me to lie to you. But I told him that you deserved to know." He paced back across the console room towards her again. "Then he asked me not to tell you until we were here. I don't know why he wanted you gone, but I said yes."

"Why would you do that?" she asked, all curiosity now. "Why would you say no to lying to me, but say yes to that? Waiting to tell me the truth?"

"It's kind of a long story."

"Abbreviate it," she instructed, as though she was calling a student out on his crap excuse for not finishing the assignment.

"Okay…"

* * *

"Perfect," The Doctor said, eyeing the structure. "Well… admittedly _not perfect_. But we gave it our best go."

"It'll have to work? Or should we build it again?" the child minder, Maci asked with concern.

" _Oh. No!_ It'll work pretty brilliantly, in fact. Just looks a bit rubbish." He made a face at the lopsided metal cage that looked nothing like a teepee in the least. And it could have been such an elegant little project for them all. "Ah, well. Child labor…" he joked.

Maci shot him a warning glare as one of the youngest ones clung to her skirt. It was made all the more sinister – or comical, he couldn't quite tell – by the necktie wrapped around her head.

"Right. Okay." He turned to walk back toward the old pile of junk to put the finishing touches to his brilliant, yet briefly conceived, plan, when he nearly stumbled upon little Anise. She had played his shadow since he sent the other two adults back to the TARDIS.

"What?" he asked, trying not to be cross, but feeling every second fly by at increasing speed.

"Why did you send my friends away?"

The accusation in her voice came close to the feeling of a proper slap from River. Those young, expressive eyes had the same ability to glare.

He dropped to a crouch, with more grace than he would usually allow himself, and held a hand out, beckoning her to come closer. She sighed deeply and stepped forward. The Doctor saw the stubborn set to her jaw that Susan sometimes got when she…

_Oh._

He hadn't thought about Susan in a long time.

Warring this time for preferential place in his mind were the two voices: _The one who forgets_ , and _sentimental idiot_.

He did his best to ignore them both.

"I didn't _send them away_ , Anise. I asked them to go."

"But they were my friends," she whispered, as though it was her most precious possession, that secret. Sometimes he felt that way too.

"They're my friends too, dear," he said, taking her little had into his larger, time roughened one.

"Will they be safe?"

He nodded, not sure what the proper answer was going to be, but unwilling to explain that uncertainty to a four-year-old.

"Are we going to be safe?" she asked, this time, looking straight into the hearts of him.

"Magnificently," he said, sweeping her up into his arms. "But there may be a little danger. And there may be a little running. Because… well, there's usually running. But what would life be without a little excitement, eh?" At his upturn in mood, she let a bright smile shine down on him from where he held her at his shoulder. "Now, he said, her spirit buoying him. "Let's put the finishing touches on this play!"

* * *

"Last March…" Reid began, ignoring the fact that his voice was audibly wavering. "Every time we go out on the job…" he began again, feeling the tears pricking the backs of his eyes. Clearing his throat, he knew Clara saw the emotions playing across his entire body, but he didn't care. He felt betrayed. And angry over that betrayal. And, more and more since his conversation with Emily on the way back to Virginia – _You mourned the loss of a friend. I mourned the loss of six –_ he felt guilty over the anger.

And that just pissed him off.

He stood from where they were seated on the steps to the lower platform, and stalked back up, swiping at his eyes.

"Okay," he heard Clara stand up behind him. "Steady on, pretty boy. You don't have to sit, but maybe, try start again…"

He took her advice and began lapping the TARDIS console, burning off excess, angry energy.

"I had a friend. And her name was Emily Prentiss. And she had a cat named Sergio. She spoke Russian, Italian, French, Spanish, and Portuguese. She read Kurt Vonnegut, and liked stupid science tricks that I used to do to keep myself entertained. No matter how many times I beat her at poker, she still kept playing. And she had… a heart… She had such a good heart. And…" The words kept pouring out of him with an intensity that would have startled him if he hadn't been so enmeshed in all of his emotions. Balling his hand into a fist, he slammed it down on the first flat panel on the console he came to. The ship made another series of expressive whirring hums. He knew he was going crazy, then, because the noises somehow sounded comforting.

"Spencer…" Clara had stepped back up to the console platform and was standing with her hands stretched out in front of her, like someone might to approach a scared animal.

"What?" he whispered, ashamed of how he'd acted in front of an almost total stranger.

"Your nose is bleeding," she whispered back. "And you probably hurt your hand."

And he had, but the pain seemed to sober him some. He wiped at his nose, the already dried blood flaking into the stream of fresh. Clara still stood there, hands lowered. Disarmed.

"I walked beside her casket. I put flowers there. She was dead and I mourned her."

"Oh, _Spenc_ er…"

"No." He put up his hand to keep her quiet through the rest of his story. "For ten weeks straight… J.J. helped me. I spent every weekend at her place… in tears." He was near tears now. And it felt odd. After three months of feeling nothing but anger at the betrayal, he finally realized… he was ready to put it to rest. "What I didn't know was that J.J,. Hotch, and Emily were hiding the fact that… uh, she was still alive after all." Gulping, he took a breath and let the air cool his throat, still tight and hot from biting back those last, unshed tears. "She's alive. My friend, Emily Prentiss, is alive. But their lie wrecked me."

Clara's body relaxed at the same moment that the TARDIS seemed to exhale, slowly. She walked forward until she cold rest her hand next to his where he gripped the railing, white knuckled.

"That's why I couldn't lie to you for him." His eyes were still turned away when he felt her skin come into contact with his. It was the barest of touches. Her pinky finger purposefully swiped against the outside edge of his hand. It caused him to let out the breath he hadn't realized he'd been holding.

"You could've just said that someone lied to you once and you didn't like it," she whispered, with a hint of a smile to her voice.

The laughter started low in his gut, without his permission, and soon they were both shaking with it.

* * *

The remnant of the hotel's old security system provided recording equipment, and the media controller tablet that one of the children had secreted out of his room the morning of his abduction, provided the video screen. There was only one thing they were lacking for the plan to get fully underway.

Just add monsters.

"How long since the last time you saw the wicked day care lady?" The Doctor asked his newest companion.

"Um. After we shoulda had stories…" Anise said, thinking hard. "But before snack time. I think."

That meant nothing to him. Poor, simple humans… What must it be like not to have an awareness of time engrained in the core of your being from the moment of conception?

Maci could translate. He looked to Maci.

"Ten thirty is snack time," she said as she kept shuffling the children back into their corner.

"Almost five hours," he said, more to himself than anyone still paying attention to him. At this point, that was Anise, and possibly her little mate. Bloke about five years old. Jealous look to him. "How often do they feed you lot?"

"Twice a day," Lola offered when he projected the question toward the crowd of eleven. "But, we should have had something by now. We've had nothing all day."

"How neglectful," he said, shooing Anise off to stand next to the others. "Perhaps someone should call and complain."

The sonic was suddenly out of his pocket and pointed at the long lights hanging from the exposed ceiling of the subbasement room. They began to whir excitedly, quickly blending into an intense whine. One of the little girls covered her ears against the noise, and, as if on cue, the light sparked ever brighter before finally dying out.

* * *

After a few moments of calm between the two of them, Clara quickly remembered why she had been angry to begin with. He wasn't ditching her just 'cause he was scared she might get a bloody lip.

"What are you doing?" Spencer asked as she tried pulling levers, turning nobs, and finally resorted to kicking at the base of the console.

"It isn't working!" she shouted in frustration. "I never learned how to fly her properly. She crashed that day…" Clara said, exasperatedly remembering the journey through the wrecked ship, clear now that she had been hurtling through the Doctor's time stream. "Give me a big red button," she whispered.

"What?"

"Nothing. I need to get back there. Give me the Manipulator." She thrust her hand out, demanding the device from him. "There's gotta be a return button on that thing."

"I can't," he said with a sad smile.

"What? What is that supposed to mean? Give it here!"

"I can't. He told me how to get the ship free from the impound lock, but it requires the Vortex Manipulator."

She threw up her arms in defeat and frustration. "Fine! I'll go find him on my own."

Clara hadn't moved more than three steps forward before he clamped his hand round her wrist. They both looked down at the sight of his skin touching hers again in such an innocuous way.

"You can't."

"Why? Because he's afraid I'll see something or get in the way of things and I'll bash my toe or sprain my pinky? No! I need a better reason than that to stay away from this, Spencer."

"Okay! Maybe he thinks if you get involved and get hurt, this time it'll be more than just a paper cut!" he shouted, still gripping her wrist.

"Did he say that to you?"

"In different words…" he paused before continuing in a monotone she had begun to recognize from him as a voice of recitation. "' _This_ Clara – _our_ Clara – she is the one who's important. Not just to me, or to you, because she is right there in front of us. We can feel her, and smell her, and watch her scowl so brilliantly at her tea in the mornings she could curdle the milk. But because she is important to so many other people. So many other _worlds_. She _matters'_."

"He said that?" she asked, scowling, before she realized it was probably the same scowl he'd been referring to.

"And if that wasn't enough… I kinda need at least three hands to do what needs to be done to release this thing."

Clara heard the TARDIS groan disapprovingly at his calling her 'this thing'. It made her smile despite the worry and fear that was flooding her on her friend's behalf. Glancing down, she realized that Spencer was still holding her in place. Though, in fairness, she was still pulling against him. It would be a mistake if he let her go just now. The TARDIS might get a good kick out of it, though.

* * *

He had time to make it back to the armchair set up in the room's center (now shadowed by the malfunctioning light overhead), and to straighten his coat and begin picking at the lint specks on his pant legs.

Then the hurricane descended.

"Well. It certainly took you lot long enough to join the party! I'm the guest of honor and I've been here for ages already," he bemoaned as multiple doors slammed open round the edges of the room. He had only seen this many Silents in the same place place once before. But that timeline had been aborted and here they were – trouble, cropping up again. Well…

"But I don't see your cohorts," he continued. "The _men of whispers_ , whose strings are being pulled by my old friend, Mr. G. Intelligence. Where might they be? If I'm going to address one of you, I might as well speak with you all."

An eerily disembodied voice seemed to shout from all of the Silents at once, "Silence will fall…"

"When the question is asked," The Doctor interrupted impatiently. "Yes, yes. Old news, mate. Doesn't have anything to do with you anymore, by the way. But you won't have caught on to that bit yet. Maybe you were absent that day. How about a refresher?"

With little flourish (because, quite frankly, he had little patience for that kind of game when he could hear the frightened noises of the children behind him), he picked up the tablet and tapped away for a second, appearing for all of the world to care nothing for the time.

"You can learn so many things from the good old information mainframe these days." As he spoke and tapped away at the tablet, the Silents began to crowd him in his armchair. He need only feign disinterest for a few more seconds. "My guess is that you lot are an offshoot. An upstart chapter of the Church of the Perpetual Silence. And Professor Simian, or Selah Vaus, or whatever form the budding, disembodied psychopath has decided to take this week, has seen fit to use and manipulate you all. Just like a dominant personality might use and manipulate a weaker one. Like the stereotypical schoolyard bully who takes the biggest, dumbest kid under their wing as long as they beat up everyone else for their lunch money."

By now, every Silent in the room was crowded round, in front of the Doctor and his tablet.

"And what the big, dumb bullies never seem to understand is, how any of those clever boys and girl could ever beat them at their own games."

With the help of his sonic, the in screen camera on the tablet switched on, and he gave his bowtie a quick tweak in his 'electronic mirror' before turning the lens around to face the group of aliens.

"And you've just confirmed my next suspicion," he said with a smile, still seated in his armchair, legs still crossed, with a smug look on his face. The tablet he placed back on top of the stack of crates, propped up against a brick so that the monsters continued to peer down at their own on screen reflections, caught in their own hypnotic trap.

"And what might that be, Doctor?"

A young, willowy blonde stood back from the scene now, observing, but not engaging.

"That your pets have yet to develop a defense mechanism against post-hypnotic suggestion. No natural predator… no reason for evolution to provide a defense."

"Oh, but that is _very_ clever," she said, an iciness' to her tone. "You know, the Daleks never had a natural predator either. They bestowed that title on you, I believe."

"Well you might be mistaken," he said, picking at his coat sleeve with disinterest. "I don't think they've ever heard of me. You can check. If you like."

"Yes. Managing that must have been a real challenge for you. Requires tapping into the main Dalek information servers."

"It was nothing for me," he said, a bit nervous, trying to remove any possibility of reference to Clara, if possible.

"Is that a fact?"

"Yes. It is." The Doctor finally stood, turning quickly to shoot a wink at little Anise. He could hear the quieted cries of all of the little ones, save her. "But what I want to know," he said, turning back around to face the manifestation of Selah Vaus. "Is, why her? And not Simian? I mean… if you've got a good thing going…"

"Why would I choose this appearance?" the woman asked calmly. "And why would I tell you _that_? The plan. That's what you want isn't it?"

"Seriously. One day, I'll ask and they'll just tell me," he couldn't help mumbling to himself.

"Surely you've figured it out by now, Doctor. The plan is simple. The plan is to take you – take everything you love – and to destroy you. Really, it needs little exposition."

"You know what the monsters – the bad guys, as it were – never ask?" he said, clenching and unclenching his jaw, trying desperately to control his anger. It was why she had made the threat. Get him rattled. "They never ask me about _my_ plan."

"Would it involve Miss Oswald, by any chance?" Selah asked as she peered around the Doctor's shoulder into the corner where Maci and the children stood, huddled in the cage. "I don't see her back in the shadows," she said, a grin painting her face in a way that made him feel he was going to be sick. His jaw was clenching so tightly he thought he might chip a molar. "She does seem to keep popping up around you, doesn't she?"

"What do you know about it?" he couldn't help asking. Maybe he had missed something. He couldn't afford to be in the dark. Not if Clara's core self might be in danger.

"I know she was helping you to fight the snow in Victorian London. I know that she has made numerous appearances. On Galafrey, in Cardiff, on Satellite 5. All sorts of interesting places for one simple girl from Blackpool to turn up. You reek of her, Doctor. She's all over you."

"You know," he said tightly, turning his back on Selah to face his captive audience of Silents, still entranced by their own image in the view screen. "What I never could reconcile about you lot. The Church of the Perpetual Silence… You claim to be acting in civilization's best interest. Protectors against a great evil – another Time War." He reseated himself in the armchair and aimed his sonic at the camera lens. "You claim to be protecting them! But you have left such damage in your wake. Your cause has destroyed and devastated the very people that you claim to be protecting! How is that in any way justifiable?!" The Silents all cocked their heads to the side in unison. As if they weren't creepy enough.

"Off topic, Doctor. That's a problem with you, isn't it."

"Not today," he answered Selah, curtly. "I think it's time that you lot use your over zealous ambition to save, opposed to destroy."

As he spoke, The Doctor saw, from the corner of his eye, the Whisper Men begin to materialize round the image of Selah Vaus.

"Is this your plan, Doctor? To scold them?" She laughed, all humor absent from the sound.

"Look at the people in this room," he continued addressing the Silents. "Yourselves included. Look at those eleven children who's families you have ripped apart – parents and loved ones living on, oblivious to their unremembered children. Look at me – even as great a threat as you think I must be. And tell me: Where does the real danger lie in this room? Not in those children who are part of the civilization that _you claim_ to protect. Who ordered this _travesty of a plan_ into action? _Who_?!"

"It was the white lady. And her men of whispers," they answered in unison. As they turned on the eerie manifestations of the Great Intelligence, she and her Whisper Men turned on the Doctor.

"They cannot kill me, Doctor, my strength lies protected elsewhere." AS she spoke, the room was lit up by the electrical currents of the Silents, arcing and crackling ever closer to the woman and her followers.

Backing away from the crowd of monsters, The Doctor smiled sadly, fingering the dials on the side of his sonic once more. "I know," he said softly. And he knew what that would mean for his friend. His impossible girl. The girl who saved his many lives. "I know."

The current quickly gained a massive strength from the amplification of so many Silents in the confined space. Finally, it reached out to strike at the collective of the Great Intelligence, and the Doctor leapt backward into the cage, deploying his sensors and stabilizer's at once.

* * *

" _Oi_! What is _the matter_ with you!" Clara yelled at the console as it began emitting a high-pitched whine.

"I think that's it!" Spencer yelled back, making sure he was placed exactly one and a half places to the left of the zig-zag plotter. Clara took her place on the opposite side of the time rotor, as soon as she caught on. It was a near exact copy of the noise the Doctor had warned them to listen for.

 _This is it_ , he thought a little nervously. Piloting a space ship in the future, on his way to rescue a group of kidnapped children who's well being fell under who knew what jurisdiction, and if he was late or screwed up the sequencing…

Clara reached as far as she could with her free hand to touch his wrist. He would have returned the gesture if both of his hands weren't already occupied.

" _Geronimo_ ," she yelled. "As the Doctor would say."

 


	8. The Truth And The Doubt

"Letting it get to you. You know what that's called? Being alive. Best thing there is. Being alive right now is all that counts."  
\- The Doctor

* * *

As the electricity crashed round the room, now unleashed without prejudice upon all things living, or otherwise, the Doctor pulled his shadow in close to him, trying to calm her small, shaking frame. They would be safe inside the cage. He hoped. It had really been an afterthought. A just-in-case-scenario that he was now plenty glad he'd thought of.

Pocketing his sonic, he pulled little Anise up onto his hip, the girl still refusing tears in light of the terrifying scene before her. He waited, holding his breath, letting the seconds tick away, each one weighing like a sack of bricks on his shoulders. It was only a matter of time before the cage failed, and the sadly huddled mass of kids were swept up in the same electrical storm raging outside these pitiful walls. Perhaps he had overreached.

As he laced his fingers into the curls on the little girl's head – shushing her, even though she was being quieter than a mouse – he heard it.

The TARDIS engines. Groaning in protest at being piloted by anyone other than he or River, but there all the same. Good, old girl. His sexy thing.

Anise lifted her head from his shoulder, looking up in disbelief as the console room slowly began glimmering in and out around them.

"Geronimo," he whispered in her ear as a smile finally began to settle back onto his face.

As he watched the horror in front of him melt into the familiar metal surroundings of his home, he shut his eyes against the words she was screaming – the distorted mother-archetype created by the Great Intelligence to lure children into a false sense of security. To set a trap for him.

"Doctor!"

The shout penetrated his thoughts like a laser bullet through his chest. He opened his eyes to see Clara rushing toward the mangled metal structure that had been taken aboard the ship along with all of the additional passengers. The TARDIS wasn't taking any chances with leaving stragglers behind.

"Don't touch it!" he cried out, just before Clara could burn herself attempting to get them free. "The… the coolant settings," he instructed, indicating she should return to the console until he could get things sorted. He gulped down the panic that had risen in his chest as he set Anise down at his feet. "Don't touch the metal," he instructed the children as he retrieved his screwdriver from his pocket. Probably should have mentioned that before hand.

* * *

She found Spencer in the Library. The Doctor had offered to fly him out to New New Las Vegas after he finished dropping the children off with Maci at Cacophony Movement HQ, but he had (in her opinion) wisely declined. Some people weren't meant to travel round the universe with the Doctor, getting up to no good. She just happened to be one of the exceptions.

"Are they going to be able to go back home soon?" he asked as he heard her walking up behind him. The Doctor had explained that, once the parents made it home and were reintroduced to the places and things they had once shared with their children, the memories should come back. It was only a question of how soon.

"Don't know when, but we can hope. They're in good hands though. Maci's got a handle on them."

"Did you ever find out what happened to her… her eye?"

"No," Clara answered firmly. "Some things are meant to be just for those they belong to. She deserves that, I think." She watched him flinch a little before catching himself and covering it by running his fingers through already ruffled hair. "So… back to Virginia…"

"Yeah." He hesitated, like he meant to say more, but stoped himself a second later.

"Lot of good talks we had," she said, leaning her back against the bookshelf he'd been staring at since she came in. She could see him watching her out of the corner of her eye. "I told you about falling through the Doctor's time stream. You told me about that time your closest friends lied to you…" She nudged his sneaker with her own worn, brown leather flat.

"Good times," he mumbled.

"It was. Very good," she said quietly as he drug his gaze toward her and off of the obscure titles in front of him. "Very good," she said again, her fingers lacing through his as he stood nearer to her than she'd realized they were. "To meet you."

Leaning in slightly, the distance between them amplified by the height difference, his lips brushed across hers. Once. And then again, softly. And, finally, a third time.

And as automatically as their bodies had moved toward each other, they moved away again.

"It's just," she said, still a little breathless from the gesture.

"It's weird," he said, finishing her thought.

"Yeah."

He turned around, leaning his back against the shelf, now mirroring her. "So, do I… see you when…?"

"I don't guess so, no," she said guessing at his question. "That was your future but it was the Doctor's past. I'm traveling parallel to his timeline, so… I won't see you on that trip." She felt a little sad saying it. "Oi! Don't mention me to him! If he doesn't know me yet, he can't hear it from you."

"I get it." Holding his hands up in a gesture of surrender, he laughed. A little more freely than he had the whole rest of the trip. And it made her brighten.

"But we've got that awesome free data package from 'The Doctor Wireless' on both our phones," she beamed. "Doesn't matter when you are, you can phone me."

"I'm not the one with the habit of time-traveling, Miss Oswald!"

"No, genius. I very well might be either ahead or behind you in time. What year are you from, anyway?" He didn't look particularly far off in either direction, but you never know.

"It's September 28th, 2011," he said quickly, looking at her to answer in kind.

"Oh, I was at University. Final year. Should have focused more on exams," she smiled, then shook her head. "Glad I didn't, though."

"So, when are you now?"

"Wednesday, 4 December, 2013."

He shivered a little, standing next to her, and they both started laughing for no good reason whatever.

The Doctor came skidding awkwardly into the Library a few seconds later. Clara stiffened a bit, clearing her throat.

"We've a tight window. I've either just left from dropping off your bedroom furniture, or I'm about to be there. Either way, you should probably steer clear of your bedroom till morning. Just to be safe…" he let the words flood from his mouth, eyes lighting on Spencer only momentarily before landing nervously on Clara and sticking like glue. She'd barely spoken to him while everyone was still on board, and then only to find out what had happened while he had her holed away from it all with Spencer. Maybe he _could_ take a hint, after all.

"Thanks… I guess," Spencer answered, shaking his head slightly at the absurdity of it all. Of the Doctor.

As they all walked back down the hall toward the console room, Clara grabbed Spencer by the elbow to get his attention.

"It's this J.J. person that you haven't forgiven yet, yeah?" He stared at her with a curious look on his face that said he got the meaning of her question. "You will," she said, determinedly.

"How do you know that?" She could hear the hurt and anger still hot beneath the surface of his voice, and she gave him a smile as she looked over at the Doctor. He was stealing glances at her as he fumbled about the console, anxious, and hiding it badly.

"Because you will," she said again. Just like she would. In the end.

* * *

He finished repacking his go bag from the fresh load of laundry spread out on the couch. He'd slept till one p.m. without scratching the surface of rested, before he'd gotten up and started his post-case routine over again. His dry cleaning still needed to be dropped off and the milk in the fridge was starting to turn a sort of puce color He could go without cereal for a few days, it wouldn't kill him.

When he'd finally ventured back into his bedroom, the furniture – every piece returned – was creatively placed at odd angles, nowhere near it's original location, with a note in beautiful, careful script that explained the arrangement was much better for playing 'the floor is lava'.

He sank to the floor as he finished reading the note, answering one more question he'd been too afraid to ask the Doctor before he'd left.

_You might have run into a few of your colleagues by now, I'm afraid. Sorry, but the old girl gets pushy sometimes. It's the TARDIS Voice Interface. She operates on a low level telepathic, eh, she knows who you know. Who's important to you. She likes showing me people who… well, it doesn't matter, really. The point is to say I'm sorry on her behalf. She really does have a mind of her own. Cheeky. See you around, Spencer._

He hadn't imagined it, dreamt it, manifested it out of a fractured psyche. Not a single minute of it. Not even his friends, nudging him, urging him to believe in the unbelievable.

Allowing himself the long sigh that had been sitting in his chest, waiting to escape since he set foot back in his living room last night, he felt the tears start to stream down his face. And he let them fall.

He sat like that for a long time before he started dragging his bed and end tables back into their appropriate places around the room. When he finished up he decided it was time to sit and soak in the tub for a good hour, at least. That's when his phone began ringing.

Letting the tension fall from his shoulders, he decided that he didn't care. He dropped his jeans, keys and phone rattling in his pocket when they hit the tile floor. His tee shirt hit the floor immediately after.

An hour later he felt a little more human again. A few cups of real coffee and another full nights sleep and he should be prepared to face the office again tomorrow morning. Then he remembered the phone call from before. The voicemail notification was lit up and he pressed play, wondering if it would be Clara's voice coming to him from two years in his future.

 _Hey Reid,_ Garcia sing-songed down the line. _I know how you feel about it and it's probably why you're ignoring my call – which you are in deep trouble for, by the way! I would never! Anyway… There's that cooking class slash bonding thing going on at Rossi's tonight, and there is no way I'm letting you get away with missing it! It won't be the same without you, my love. And, besides! Real Italian food cooked by a real Italian! Come on, Reid! Be there. Or else,_ she threatened, using her tough girl voice. Then more sweetly, _Okay. I love you. Bye._

Reid smiled, shaking his head in amusement. He'd pushed all thought of the gathering to the back of his mind, having decided before they'd even returned from the case that he wasn't attending. But as he sat on his kitchen counter, cradling his coffee cup in one hand and flipping his phone open and closed with the other, he thought about a small brown haired girl with wide, sincere eyes. A girl who had seen more in her short life than anybody had a right to see or process. A girl who could scowl so brilliantly at her tea that she could curdle milk. And he thought about what they had said to each other before he'd exited the blue box early that morning:

_"_ _It's this J.J. person that you haven't forgiven yet, yeah? You will."_

_"_ _How do you know that?"_ he had asked, still feeling the hurt of the past three months well up in his throat.

_"_ _Because you will."_

He set the mug on the counter and reached for his coat and keys. It was time to find out if Clara had been right.

* * *

"Home again?" he asked her as she ambled around the console room, a little like a lioness on the prowl. Spencer had just closed the doors and he had been able to breathe a major sigh of relief. Another one home safely.

"Why don't you park her for a mo?" Clara said – more of an order than a request.

Once they were safely tucked away in a corner of the lesser-frequented Maynorian Nebula, and he had nothing else to do with himself, he began pacing round the time rotor, absently brushing stray biscuit crumbs from the console.

"Why did you lie to me?"

She wasn't wasting any time, then. Getting to it.

"Rule number one," he scoffed without humor.

"That's not a reason. You don't lie _just to lie_. Any idiot who's ever met you knows that. I want to know _why_ you lied."

"Can't we just move on and be glad it's over and done with? You're safe. I wanted you safe. And you are."

"No. Nope. Doctor. I've been in danger more times than my ' _little human brain_ ', as you might put it, can keep track of." He flinched at how cold she made him sound. But she'd been right. He was, that. Sometimes. "If you were scared for my safety you should have told me everything. The whole plan, as it was happening in your head. I could have helped." He opened his mouth to protest, but she clamped her little hand over it, shutting him up while she finished. "I might have been able to do something! Something – I don't know! – important! Ever since I figured out who I was – that riddle that you were trying so hard to solve all of those months ago – ever since than, I like to think that I mattered." She let her hand fall from his mouth, a deflated look shadowing her pretty face.

"You do," he whispered, forcefully.

She turned and walked across the room to sit on the steps to the worn, wooden doors. The Doctor looked up at them – old friends – and sighed, following her to take a seat a step down so that she could meet his eyes.

"You matter. So much, Clara. So much," he said, reaching for her hand. That was why he couldn't let anything happen to change who she became at Trenzalore. But he knew he wasn't ready to speak those words to her. Sad, selfish old man that he was.

"You said something about Manhattan," she whispered. He'd forgotten. Not about Manhattan, never that. But about saying something in front of her. If he gave her that piece of him, maybe she would let the other drop. Maybe.

"Ponds," he said softly, dropping her hand to run his fingers through his hair and tug sorrowfully at his bowtie.

Clara sat still at his elbow, waiting for him to go on, feeling the gravity he placed in that name. _Ponds_.

"She was my friend." _The first face this face saw_ , he thought to himself, not willing to share something so personal just now. "And he was tenacious. The Ponds."

"They traveled with you?" she asked quietly.

"Yes." _They were my family_. "I promised them… many times… I would always be there for them, to rescue them, to find them, to keep them safe. No matter what."

"Doctor, sometimes things…"

"And I was selfish," he interrupted. "I wanted to keep her with me. And I should have been worried about River."

He was probably properly confusing her, babbling on about Ponds and River and promises he'd made that she never heard or knew about. And after so many years mourning the loss of them in silence, without even River to share his grief with, he didn't care.

"I'm sorry. I'm sorry. _I'm sorry_. _I lost you. It was my fault_."

Before he realized it he was mumbling into a mass of brown hair, Clara's small hands patting his back soothingly. Finally embarrassed at his outburst, he pulled back from her, swiping at his eyes with his shirtsleeves.

"I'm sorry," he sniffed on last time, directing his apology at Clara. "They're gone. And that makes me sad and angry and ambivalent all at once. But that was a long time ago." He patted her hand as he stood, then, compulsively straightened his bowtie. "Your safe. That's what this was all about anyway."

"Hm," she hums, cocking her head slightly at his words. "Was it?"

"I think we could both use a good, strong cuppa. What do you say?" he redirected – hopefully successfully – plastering a sheepish grin on his face.

Clara shook her head knowingly, but smiled a little, all the same. "Could go for that," she agreed. "So. Where's the best little tea shop in all of the universe, Doctor?"

"The TARDIS kitchen," he deadpanned, watching the smile on her face turn into a scowl. "Only joking! Paxalonitai Ot 9. Little place called The Unicorn's Hoof. Just steer clear of the Candidiasis blend."

"Not so good?"

"I'm pretty sure it's fermented thrush." He sputtered a laugh at the look on her face before returning to the controls. "Go get cleaned up," he ordered, still chuckling. "I'll have us there in under a tick."

"Daft old man," he heard her mutter as she headed down the corridor toward the wardrobe.

His smile quickly faded as he remembered the words that the woman had screamed to him as she was caught in the electrical storm a few hours earlier.

_She will wither with you, Doctor. Her heart will die, and there will be no semblance of your impossible girl left._

"Not today," he murmured quietly, a firm set to his jaw, as he started the engines and they drifted off in the Vortex once more.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As mentioned previously, this is a cross-poting from my time at FFNet. I have also written a prequal that was requested by a reader there that I plan to cross-post here, I did start on a short sequel titled 'Black Flag' that is as of yet unfinished. I put it down at a hectic time in my life, but I would be willing to pick it up again if there is any interest (even if only a little). Kudos and coments are encouraged!
> 
> Lots of love!  
> Yve


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